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THE CHRISTIAN MAN, THE 
CHURCH AND THE WAR 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE CHRISTIAN MAN, THE 
CHURCH AND THE WAR 



BY 

ROBERT E, SPEER 

II 



Beto gotfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1918 

All rights reserved) 



1*3 



Copyright, 1918 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, May, 1918 



MAY 15 1918 
©CM49-7307 



There are three different courses open to 
the Christian man to-day. One is to throw 
his Christian idealism overboard, and post- 
pone his effort to adjust religion to life until 
the war is over. A second is to hold fast to 
his Christian idealism and to repudiate the 
real world he is living in. The third is to 
take Paul's counsel and seek to behave as a 
citizen in a manner worthy of the Gospel, be- 
lieving that his present duty is to be a Chris- 
tian not in some other world but in this one, 
and that this duty can be done in the highest 
loyalty both to humanity and to Christ. 
This little book is an attempt at a statement 
of this third course. If the attempt is not a 
success, neither is life. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Christian Man and the War . 7 

II The Church and the War ... 32 

III The World Problem and Christian- 
ity . . 63 



THE CHRISTIAN MAN, THE 
CHURCH AND THE WAR 



THE CHRISTIAN MAN AND THE WAR 

As a Christian man, holding the Christian 
faith and trying to live the Christian life, I 
believe that the war in which the nation is 
now engaged is a just and necessary war. Is 
this a consistent position ? Can this belief be 
reconciled with the Christian faith and with 
the ideals of the Christian life? Is not 
war so fundamentally un-Christian that it can 
never be right? These were living questions 
to many men before the United States entered 
the war. Some men answered them unhesi- 
tatingly, yes or no. Others felt unable to do 
so, and so long as the obligations of citizen- 
ship allowed, evaded an answer, not knowing 
how they could reconcile the contradictions 
which seemed to them involved in the issues 
between Christianity and war. When at last 
the United States was drawn into the struggle 
7 



8 The Christian Man, 

this evasion was no longer possible. Those 
men also to whom the case against all war 
seemed to be clear were obliged to recon- 
sider their position in the light of the fact 
that the nation to which they belonged was 
actually at war. If these two groups of men 
were not prepared to take on principle and 
to hold at any cost the ultra-pacifist position, 
two other positions were open to them. One 
was to accept the war as a fact and to adapt 
themselves to it, leaving the responsibility 
for it upon others, but loyally contributing 
their full duty. The other was to review the 
whole case, to reface the moral issues and to 
discern, if they could, a righteous basis for 
the war and for America's participation in it. 
To avoid misunderstanding, I venture to 
say that I have never accepted the position 
that in our present stage of social and polit- 
ical development all war is in principle 
wrong. The problem as it presented itself 
to me was not whether Belgium and France 
and Great Britain were wrong in resisting 
Germany, — they seemed to me to be in duty 
bound to do so, — but whether and when it 
became our duty also to resist Germany by 
war. At the same time I appreciated the po- 
sition and the principles of earnest men and 
women who took a different view and to 
whom our entrance into the war brought 



the Church and the War 9 

problems of the greatest pain and difficulty 
as to the most fundamental issues of Christi- 
anity and international morality. And I 
honor the struggle which many of these men 
and women ha^e gone through and are going 
through now in an effort to be loyal Amer- 
icans and at the same time to preserve their 
own moral integrity. 

It may be thought that all these matters 
have reached a settled adjustment now and 
that it is needless to revive the questions 
which were active at the beginning of the war 
and which, if they may be stirring still in 
some minds, are checked and controlled there 
by the sense of political loyalty. This is a 
dangerous view, however. The fact is that 
these questions are as much alive as ever, that 
in the camps thousands of young men are 
arguing them, and that at the front they are 
arguing them still more. There the base 
brutalism of war is ceaselessly, sickeningly 
present, and all that is highest and best in a 
man's soul protests against its irrationality. 
There the horrors and atrocities are closest 
to men and while these nerve men to stern 
purpose, they also show them how abhorrent 
war is to humanity. There men are face to 
face with the duty of killing. The duty of 
dying does not daunt them, but the duty of 
putting other men, other boys, to death does. 



io The Christian Man, 

The whole fundamental question as to 
whether war can ever be right rises up with 
a pathos and insistency unknown before. 

" has just returned from France," 

writes a correspondent. " He has become a 
rabid pacifist. Rabid is not the word, enthu- 
siastic is better. He says that war is abso- 
lutely un-Christian, that no Christian has a 
right to have anything to do with war, either 
this war or any other, that those who believe 
they serve God by fighting may have clear 
consciences, but they are mistaking God's 
message." As we go deeper into the war, 
these questionings will not abate. They will 
increase. And the reflex influence will be 
felt at home. Brigadier General John A. 
Johnston has issued a timely warning that we 
must prepare for this. (New York Times, 
Feb. 27, 19 1 8.) It is folly to be deaf to 
such a warning, to think that these questions 
can be met by coercion of any kind or by mob 
authority. They must be met squarely and 
we must convince ourselves and others clearly 
of the moral obligation of carrying the strug- 
gle through until the international wrong- 
doing which brought on this war and which 
has characterized it and against which we are 
fighting, is put down once for all and forever. 
It does not matter how long this may take nor 
how much it may cost, it must be done. And 



the Church and the War II 

if war is the only way in which it can be done, 
if Germany will accept no other decision, then 
by war it must be done, and the mind and 
heart of the nation must be intelligently and 
resolutely girded to the task. 

The fundamental question which was alive 
before the war and which is alive to-day 
again and which will be alive when the war is 
over is : Can war ever be right, or is war in 
moral principle always wrong? That ques- 
tion will be alive until at last a day comes 
when the whole world will answer against 
war. When that day comes men will look 
back upon what we say about war now as we 
look back upon what men used to say about 
slavery. This book that I am writing, if a 
copy should remain until that future day of 
peace, will seem a sad and pitiful thing to any 
one of its happy citizens who may chance 
upon it. But this day is not that day. We 
are living in a world in which one great na- 
tion has deliberately repudiated the ideal 
of peace, built up enormous armaments de- 
signed for aggression, invaded other nations, 
with one, at least, of whom it had not only no 
quarrel but solemn engagements of neutral- 
ity. Our nation has been beset on every side 
by a whole world at war. In this world we 
have had to decide our present duty. 

Well, the Christian man who wants even 



12 The Christian Man, 

in such a world to see truth as calmly and 
dispassionately as possible, will do well to 
set aside for a moment all but the bare gen- 
eral question which he must answer: Can 
any war be right? 

The militarist answer, that war is a good 
thing in itself, can be rejected quietly. It 
belongs to a bygone day. If it were a living 
contention it should be assassinated and it 
would be. In so far as it is living we are 
fighting to kill it. This is the view which 
Dr. von Luschau, Professor of Anthropology 
in the University of Berlin, set forth in his 
paper on " The Anthropological View of 
Race " at the Universal Races Congress in 
London in 191 1: " Racial barriers will 
never cease to exist, and if ever they should 
show a tendency to disappear, it will certainly 
be better to preserve than to obliterate them. 
The brotherhood of man is a good thing, but 
the struggle for life is a far better one. 
Athens would never have become what it was 
without Sparta, and national jealousies and 
differences, and even the most cruel wars, 
have ever been the real causes of progress 
and mental freedom. . . . No Hague Con- 
ferences, no international tribunals, no inter- 
national papers and peace societies, no Espe- 
ranto or other international languages, will 
ever be able to abolish war. . . . Natural 



the Church and the War 13 

law will never allow national boundaries to 
fall. . . . Nations will come and go, but 
racial and national antagonism will remain, 
and this is well, for mankind would become 
like a herd of sheep if we were to lose our 
national ambition and cease to look with 
pride and delight, not only on our industries 
and science, but also on our splendid soldiers 
and glorious ironclads." (Report, Univer- 
sal Races Congress, London, 191 1, p. 23.) 
This view is uncivilized, barbarous and false. 
War for national aggrandizement, for the 
enlargement of territory, or for the expan- 
sion of trade is wrong. Such war has not 
been without its advocates. " In every part 
of the world where British interests are at 
stake," said Edward Dicey, in an article en- 
titled " Peace and War in South Africa " in 
The Nineteenth Century, September, 1899, 
" I am in favor of advancing and upholding 
these interests even at the cost of annexation 
and at the risk of war. The only qualifica- 
tion I admit is that the country we desire to 
annex or take under our protection, the claims 
we choose to assert and the cause we decide 
to espouse, should be calculated to confer a 
tangible advantage upon the British Empire." 
And the same view has been expressed among 
ourselves in articles in the magazine called 
Seven Seas (Seven Seas, Sept., 19 15, pp. n, 



14 The Christian Man, 

13; Nov., 1 9 1 5 , p. 28.) "World empire," 
says the writer, " is the only logical and 
rational aim of a nation. . . . The true 
militarist believes that pacifism is the mascu- 
line and humanitarianism is the feminine 
manifestation of national degeneracy. . . . 
It is the absolute right of a nation to live to 
its fullest intensity, to expand, to found 
colonies, to get richer and richer by any 
proper means, such as armed conquest, com- 
merce and diplomacy." We are fighting a 
great war to destroy this view. 

War for national glory or national pride 
is wrong. The idea belongs to the same 
level of morals and jurisprudence as dueling. 
A nation cannot clear its honor or increase its 
true glory by war. If it has done right it has 
no dishonor to clear. If it has done wrong 
war cannot conceal it or atone for it. And 
it is a doubtful question both to the Christian 
conscience and to the political judgment as to 
whether it is right in itself or helpful to hu- 
man progress for a nation to fight for its own 
material rights alone. We may venture 
to grant to the opponent of all war his 
claim that such wars also are wrong. If the 
rights are not mere isolated rights, but the 
rights of humanity, and if the attack to be 
resisted is made upon innocent persons and 
upon human solidarity we will take back the 



the Church and the War 15 

concession. But we are anxious to concede 
as much as may be possible. 

And with all that the hater of war may be 
able to say against the horror and shame and 
hellishness of war we will agree, asking only 
words with which to help him in his denuncia- 
tion. It is an evil deeper and darker than 
speech. " I do not merely want to end this 
war. I want to nail down war in its coffin. 
Modern war is an intolerable thing. ... It 
is disaster. It may be a necessary disaster 
. . . but for all that I insist it remains waste, 
disorder, disaster." (H. G. Wells, "Italy, 
France and Britain at War.") 

" Well, then," says the conscience stern 
against war, " if you hold all this and are 
ready to go even further, what kind of war 
can be right? " And we reply, such a war 
as the American nation believes it is waging 
now, a war in defense of human rights, of 
weak nations, of innocent and inoffensive peo- 
ples, an unselfish war in which the nation 
seeks absolutely nothing for itself and is 
willing to spend everything in order that all 
men, including its enemies, may be free. 
This is a kind of war which we believe to be 
justified and right in principle in a world in 
which, at this time, these ends can only be 
defended in this way. War is an evil and is 
not to be tolerated unless the only alternative 



1 6 The Christian Man, 

offered is a worse evil. And to let the wrong 
have free course, to let might triumph over 
justice is a worse evil than resistance. 

But this is the very issue with many consci- 
entious Christian men and women who see all 
this as clearly as any one can, but who, when 
they put their difficulty into words, say these 
five things : 

I. "It is wrong to kill. Doing it on a 
big scale, in the name of the nation and under 
the form of war, does not alter the fact that 
it is killing. War is the killing of others 
and it is wholesale self-killing too. And 
killing is wrong. The sixth commandment 
merely expresses a fundamental moral in- 
stinct of humanity." To this what answer 
can be made? Several answers. First, it is 
murder, not death, that is forbidden by the 
sixth commandment and the moral sense of 
mankind. The same law which forbade mur- 
der proclaimed death as the penalty for mur- 
der. And the moral sense of mankind has 
always justified killing as a prevention of 
murder. Second, life is a sacred thing, but 
there are times when some lives must be sac- 
rificed that others may be saved. If the 
Turks are massacreing Armenians, the law of 
the sacredness of human life requires, not 
that the assassins shall be allowed to go on 
with impunity, but that they shall be stopped 



the Church and the War 17 

even at the cost of their own lives. That is 
the way an outraged law works. Third, war 
is killing, but a war against war is a war 
against killing. It is a dreadful remedy, 
but if it is the only remedy, the greater wrong 
is in flinching from its use. And, fourth, the 
abstract principle of the inviolability of hu- 
man life cannot be maintained. If it is, how 
can God be justified in allowing death or in 
inflicting it? Fifth, there is no law against 
self-sacrifice. Regarding His own life, our 
Lord declared: "I have a right to lay it 
down of myself." And of His disciples' lives 
He said: " Greater love hath no man than 
this, that a man lay down his life for his 
friends." Would that not justify a man to- 
day in laying down his life for Belgium or 
for France ? And last, life is not the great- 
est thing in the world nor death the most 
dreadful. " What is a man worse for dy- 
ing? " asked Scatcherd in Trollope's "Dr. 
Thorne," " What can I be worse for dying? 
A man can die but once." Many things are 
better than life. Duty and righteousness and 
truth are all worth more than life. Happy 
are they who are counted " worthy to die for 
a great cause," said John Brown, " and 
not merely to pay the debt of nature as all 
must." 

It is wrong to murder; as wrong as it is 



1 8 The Christian Man, 

right to stop those who are doing it, even at 
the risk of losing their lives and our own. 

2. " It is wrong to use physical force in 
resisting evil." Why physical? What is 
the valid moral distinction between physical 
force and other kinds of influence? It is cer- 
tainly right to use intellectual and moral and 
spiritual force to prevent evil. What is the 
moral difference in using physical force? 
And if it is wrong to use physical force in 
resisting evil, why is it not wrong also in 
doing good? Does any one think of main- 
taining such a proposition? And further- 
more, what it is morally right for God to do, 
is it not morally right for man to do in God's 
name in the way of duty? God is using 
physical force every day both to achieve good 
and to prevent evil. Man may safely act 
in accord with God in this. " But all use 
of violence or of physical restraint is an inva- 
sion of the personality." But which is the 
worse invasion, a robber's, entering my neigh- 
bor's house to steal his goods and kill his 
little children, or mine, meeting the robber 
at the door and binding him hand and foot? 
Whose " personality " has the greater right 
to protection, his or my neighbor's? Even 
so clear and earnest a pacifist as Mr. Ber- 
trand Russell sees that " the use of force is 
justifiable when it is ordered in accordance 
with law, by a neutral authority in the gen- 



the Church and the War 19 

eral interest." (Quoted in The New Repub- 
lic, April 21, 1917, p. 353-) 

The moral end for which physical force 
exists is its use in righteous and loving serv- 
ice. The vital thing is the use to which it is 
put and the end it serves, not the resistance it 
meets. If I am going down the street and 
see a window coping about to fall on the head 
of a child, it is my right and duty to hold it 
back whether it is about to fall naturally or is 
pushed down by a violent man. The moral 
problem lies in having power to prevent 
wrong and not using it. 

3. " War is contrary to the teaching and 
spirit of Jesus. ' Put up thy sword into its 
place,' He said to the man defending Him 
from arrest, who used force in the protection 
of the innocent, ' for all they that take the 
sword shall perish by the sword/ Jesus 
taught the duty of absolute non-resistance to 
evil." Yes, war is contrary to the teaching 
and spirit of Jesus. The nation that initiates 
a war is violating His law and His mind. 
But when it has done so, and war, violating 
His principles and disregarding and dishon- 
oring His love, has been let loose, then does 
it follow that His teaching and spirit require 
that free and unhindered course must be 
given to it? Ask John what might happen 
then. He knew the spirit of Jesus and he 



20 The Christian Man, 

declared that he was in that spirit when he 
wrote what he saw : 

" And I saw the heaven opened ; and behold, a 
white horse, and He that sat thereon, called Faithful 
and True; and in righteousness He doth judge and 
make war. And His eyes are a flame of fire, and 
upon His head are many diadems; and He hath a 
name written, which no one knoweth but He Him- 
self. And He is arrayed in a garment sprinkled 
with blood: and His name is called The Word of 
God. And the armies which are in heaven followed 
Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white 
and pure. And out of His mouth proceedeth a 
sharp sword, that with it He should smite the na- 
tions: and He shall rule them with a rod of iron: 
and He treadeth the- winepress of the fierceness of 
the wrath of Almighty God. And He hath on His 
garment and on His thigh a name written, King of 
Kings, and Lord of Lords.' (Rev. xix, 11-16.) 

And lest it should be thought that these vast 
visions are too poetical, remember Jesus' own 
words regarding wrongs against the innocent 
and the just feelings and actions of human 
governments : 

" And whoso shall receive one such little child in 
My name receiveth Me: but whoso shall cause one 
of these little ones which believe on Me to stumble, 
it is profitable for him that a great millstone should 
be hanged about his neck, and that he should be 
sunk in the depth of the sea." (Matt, xviii, 5, 6.) 



the Church and the War 21 

" Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this 
world: if My kingdom were of this world, then 
would My servants fight, that I should not be deliv- 
ered to the Jews." (John xviii, 36.) 

We err if we think of Jesus and His Spirit 
in terms of compassion alone. We must 
think of Him also in terms of righteousness. 
He was love and He was also justice and 
truth. He did indeed surrender His life 
without resistance to His enemies, but He 
also again and again pronounced judgment 
both on sin as such and on men as sinners, as 
His disciples did in His name (Acts v, 1-1 1 ) . 
He taught the duty of pity and unselfishness 
and forgiveness, but He never abrogated or 
compromised the principles of righteousness. 
Neither in His example nor in His teaching 
is there any warrant for the surrender by 
society of the political order of human life to 
the power of evil and wrong-doing. Men 
may and often must do just as Jesus did, in 
the will of God, but society may not dissolve 
nor ignore God's just and righteous govern- 
ment. 

4. " War is an evil. It does not matter 
how it is justified or what it is fought for. It 
is always and only evil. It means economic 
loss and waste. It eats up the accumulated 
toil of the past. It consumes the resources 



22 The Christian Man, 

of the people. It destroys its treasures. It 
breeds moral disease. It poisons the blood 
of the nation. It accomplishes nothing. 
When it is over there is ruin and there is 
nothing else." Yes, this is a mild statement. 
It can be qualified perhaps in some particu- 
lars. But it can also be enlarged a hundred- 
fold and its color turned from gray into scar- 
let and lurid night. War is an evil, but I 
say again there can be a worse evil. It is a 
worse evil to surrender to war, to let a war- 
purposing nation have its own unhindered 
way, to allow the principle of injustice to 
triumph. It is better to die fighting against 
Dr. von Luschau's theory of a world order 
than to live accepting it. The one war that 
can be right and not all evil is the war that 
will end war forever. That war is morally 
just. It is worth any sacrifice. 

5. " Yes, but the only way to stop war is 
to stop it. You can't stop it by carrying it 
on. You can only stop it when some nation 
at any cost refuses to resist its enemy, or 
when some nation disarms and renounces war 
for itself forever." Some day this may 
come true. The nations will " beat their 
swords into plowshares, and their spears 
into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift 
up sword against nation, neither shall 
they learn war any more." But until that 



the Church and the War 23 

day comes the practical question which one 
nation after another has had to answer and, 
until we get war killed, will have to continue 
to answer, will be the question of its duty, 
resting in its own safety and peace, to other 
weaker nations in peril and distress. And 
the weaker nation may really be fighting the 
battle of the great nation which is at safety 
and peace, standing between it and its enemy. 
It is not heroic, it is less than honorable for 
a nation to throw on such beleaguered nations 
the burden of making a world-peace by the 
surrender of all that they are and have, to 
advise them to yield to the aggressor in the 
assurance that if they will do so war will end. 
For three years in this world war the United 
States refused to arm. It strove by every 
means to maintain peace. It scrupulously 
observed all the requirements of neutrality 
and of international law. Was it secured 
thereby against assault upon its citizens and 
upon its peaceful relations with other peo- 
ples? In a world that will some day come 
this will be different. It may be that some 
Telemachus nation may stop the last war, if 
this war is not the last, by sacrificing itself as 
the monk did when he ended the gladia- 
torial shows in Rome. But we have as yet no 
nation sufficiently holy for such a sacrifice and 
neither hitherto nor now has submission 



24 The Christian Man, 

shamed aggressive nations into peace. And 
while men innocently suffer the old question 
will recur: " Shall your brethren go to the 
war and you sit here? " And the notes of 
the ancient song return: 

" And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah; 

As was Issachar, so was Barak ; 

Into the valley thy rushed forth at his feet. 

By the watercourses of Reuben 

There were great resolves of heart. 

Why sattest thou among the sheepfolds,' 

To hear the pipings for the flocks? 

At the watercourses of Reuben 

There were great searchings of heart. 

Gilead abode beyond the Jordan: 

And Dan, why did he remain in ships? 

Asher sat still at the haven of the sea 

And abode by his creeks. 

Zebulun was a people that jeoparded their lives unto 

the death, 
And Naphtali, upon the high places of the field. 
Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of Jehovah, 
Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, 
Because they came not to the help of Jehovah, 
To the help of Jehovah against the mighty." 

(Judges v, 15-18, 23.) 

One wants to deal fairly by the Christian 
man who feels these five difficulties. They 
are valid objections to a war of aggression. 
I do not see that they are valid against an 
unselfish war in defense of human rights. 



the Church and the War 25 

But we can go further in our thought on 
the question, whether in principle war can 
ever be right in our actual world. 

The past is a record of how God actually 
has shaped human history. Can any one 
deny that there have been wars which on one 
side at least were right? If there is any 
truth at all in the Old Testament records it 
is clear from them that again and again men 
were convinced that they were fighting with 
the very help and warrant of God. In our 
own national history, who is prepared to say 
that both the Revolutionary and the Civil 
Wars represented no right principle for 
which the nation was justified in contending 
even to the death? The New Testament 
itself recognized the legitimacy of military 
service for Christian men as it certainly could 
not have done without sacrifice of its moral 
authority if it be true that war cannot be 
morally allowed in human life. And in all 
later days many of the noblest and purest 
Christian spirits have been soldiers. 

This fact that God has allowed wars in 
human history and that Christian men have 
been soldiers does not prove that war is a 
good thing and that it is to be accepted as a 
lasting human institution, a part of the divine 
order of the world, any more than the exist- 
ence of polygamy in the Old Testament times 



26 The Christian Man, 

and of slavery in New Testament times and 
for centuries afterwards proves that polyg- 
amy and slavery are good things and divinely 
ordered permanent institutions. There is 
such a thing as world progress. What was 
allowable and even necessary in one day be- 
comes wrong and intolerable in another. 
The day will come when war will be an ana- 
chronism, a long abandoned evil of the bar- 
baric times. We are waging the present war 
to accomplish this very result. But until that 
day, so long as human law and human life 
know only the principles of our present order, 
war cannot be said to be in principle unallow- 
able. God has allowed it. We did our best 
to escape it, but it came unsought and un- 
avoidable. The facts of history justify it 
to-day. May it be for the last time ! To- 
morrow, please God, it will be outlawed for- 
ever. 

Not only does the past refuse to justify the 
view that Christianity and war are irrecon- 
ciliable as yet, although God intends and we 
intend, by His help, that they shall be, but 
the fundamental Christian principles of trus- 
teeship and unselfishness require resistance to 
wrong directed against the weak and the inno- 
cent. The wrong of war for selfish ends is 
as clear as sunlight, but in Jesus' words, " Re- 
sist not evil," there is no warrant for a man, 



the Church and the War 27 

as Captain Mahan says, " to surrender the 
rights of another, still less if he is the trustee 
of those rights. This applies with double 
emphasis to rulers and to nations; for these, 
in this matter, have no personal rights. 
They are guardians, trustees, and as such are 
bound to do their best, even to the use of 
force, if need be, for the rightful interest of 
their wards. Personally, I go farther, and 
maintain that the possession of power is a tal- 
ent committed in trust, for which account will 
be exacted; and that, under some circum- 
stances, an obligation to repress evil external 
to its borders rests upon a nation as responsi- 
bility for the slums rests upon the rich quar- 
ters of a city. In this respect I call to wit- 
ness Armenia, Crete, and Cuba, without, 
however, presuming to judge the consciences 
of the nations who witnessed without inter- 
vention the sufferings of the first two." 

It is in this principle that we get light upon 
the teaching of Jesus about non-resistance. 
He clearly bade us to yield our own rights, 
but he did not bid us to yield our duties. If 
one smites us on our own cheek we are to 
turn to him the other, but if he smites a little 
child on one cheek he will not smite it on the 
other if we have the strength and love of 
Christ in us. Set in the duty of service we 
are to stand immovable, faithful unto death, 



28 The Christian Man 



shielding the helpless, protecting the weak, 
overthrowing the evil. 

Another New Testament conception which 
makes it impossible for us as yet to set up 
the thesis of the absolute indefensibility of 
war is the conception of the state as an ordi- 
nance of God. Paul held this conception 
firmly ( Romans xiii, 3-7 ) and he did not hesi- 
tate to appeal to the state for military pro- 
tection against violence and crime (Acts xxiii, 
17-23). The Christian Church in the first 
century was not called, and never as a Church 
has been called, to go to war; but nations and 
ordered governments, whether then or now, 
are to do justice and to prevent wrong. Paul 
said this was the divine purpose of govern- 
ment in the case of Rome (Romans xiii, 4). 
It is not possible that God should intend a 
heathen government to prevent evil, but 
Christian governments to permit it. 

And we cannot absolutely rule out war 
from the universe on the ground that it em- 
ploys force and costs human life if at the 
same time we believe in God. If the uni- 
verse is not moral, then, of course, no ethical 
question will trouble us. But if it is moral, 
if a personal God is back of it, must not the 
use of force and of human life in the progress 
of the world be warrantable if He uses them 
so? Can H/e not allow and authorize this 



the Church and the War 29 

war? When he has educated us a little more 
we may be sure He will rule war out. The 
God in Whom we believe would have de- 
stroyed it long ago if He could have done so 
without destroying man too. But until man- 
kind comes to the stage where war can be 
abandoned without abandoning the world to 
the armed wrong-doer, we cannot say that 
the use of war for righteous defense is wrong. 
Still against the armed man of evil-will one 
may sing: 

" Blessed be Jehovah my rock, 
Who teacheth my hands to war, 
And my fingers to fight: 
My lovingkindness and my fortress, 
My high tower, and my deliverer ; 
My shield, and He in whom I take refuge." 
(Psalm cxliv, 1, 2.) 

Let it be said again that the time will come 
when all this sort of argumentation will seem 
to men the talk of a forgotten day. It will 
be then the talk of a bygone time. But the 
day is not forgotten now nor the time bygone. 
It is the reality of life and duty to us. It is 
in this world that we are living, not in that 
new and different world. And we shall 
never bring that other and better day in if 
we do not do our duty now. Our duty now 
is to refute the false ideals of military autoc- 



30 The Christian Man, 

racy and of willful power, to check and throw 
back national ambition that ignores the rights 
of the weak and that aims at usurpation and 
dominion, to destroy at any cost to ourselves 
the principle of war, to deliver mankind from 
the unbearable burden of armaments and 
dread of attack. It is not tolerable to live in 
such a world. And if there is no other es- 
cape from it than by the death of men in war, 
let us die so, in order that other men may 
live in a different world. 

But if what is said here is true and we are 
justified in this one more war to stop war, it 
does not follow that we are free to yield to 
the spirit that we set out to destroy. Pre- 
cisely otherwise. If this view now allows 
and warrants war, it also warns and cautions 
and sobers us. It bids us be rid of our preju- 
dice and passion, to chant no hymns of hate, 
to keep our aims and our principles free from 
selfishness and from any national interest 
which is not also the interest of all nations, 
to refrain from doing in retaliation and in 
war the very things we condemn in others, to 
avoid Prussianism in our national life in the 
effort to crush Prussianism, to guard against 
the moral uncleanness which has character- 
ized past wars as against pestilence, to mag- 
nify the great constructive and humane serv- 
ices for which humanity calls in every such 



the Church and the War 31 

time of tragedy, to love and pray for our 
enemies, to realize that the task set for us is 
not to be discharged in a year or five years, 
nor by money and ships and guns, but by life, 
that it is a war to the death against all that 
makes war possible. We have to replace 
an order of selfishness and wrong and di- 
vision with an order of brotherhood and 
righteousness and unity. Whatever stands 
in the way of that new order in our 
nation or in our hearts is an ally of the 
ideals and spirit against which we contend. 
To tolerate or to conceal behind our armies 
the policies, the prejudices or the passions 
which are before them is disloyalty. To try 
to make our own hearts pure and our own 
hands clean so that we may be worthy of 
being used to achieve victory and peace is loy- 
alty, and it is the only kind of loyalty that will 
stand the strain that we must now prepare 
ourselves to meet. 



II 

THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 

The problem of war to the Church is even 
greater than its problem for the Christian 
man. All that makes the problem difficult 
for the individual makes it difficult also for 
the Church and there is more besides. The 
social character and international relations of 
the Church and its sense of universal mission 
make its implication in war a tragic thing. 
The problem has become the more difficult 
to-day also by reason of the great confusion 
surrounding the character and work of the 
Church, its aims, its functions, its legitimate 
business. This confusion is illustrated in the 
conflicting criticisms which have been directed 
against the Church. On the one hand it was 
demanded at the outbreak of the war four 
years ago that the Church should explain why 
it and the Christian religion, of which it was 
the representative, had not prevented the war. 
If only the Church had applied Christianity 
to the hearts of rulers and to the relations of 
32 



The Church and the War 33 

nations the war could not have been! No 
doubt. Likewise, if chloroform had been 
applied to the rulers. But neither Chris- 
tianity nor chloroform is self-applying. As 
the war went on and it became the conviction 
of more and more people in America that the 
nation would have to take part in the great 
struggle, a contrary complaint was made 
against the Church. Why w r as it so pacific? 
Why did it not fire the spirit of the nation and 
force the reluctance of the President and 
compel the entrance of America into the war? 
But the President had charged the nation to 
be neutral and had asked to be allowed to 
handle the intricate situation without pres- 
sures which would limit his ability to do the 
best for the nation and mankind. He was 
showing the whole world an example of mod- 
eration and restraint. Was it the business 
of the Christian Church to refuse loyalty to 
the head of the nation acting in such a spirit 
and with tireless purpose to preserve peace 
until it could no longer be preserved? Was 
it the Church's true function to precipitate 
the war or to support in every way the Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy in 
his policy to avert war if it might be possible ? 
The confusion with regard to the real na- 
ture and function of the Church illustrated in 
these colliding criticisms with regard to the 



34 The Christian Man, 

initiation of the war is revealed also in the 
various activities urged on the Church now. 
Many of these are not the duty of the Church 
at all. They may be the duties of Christian 
men. If they are patriotic duties they assur- 
edly are the duties of Christian men, but they 
are not the business of the institution of the 
Church. This confusion is not all a bad 
thing by any means. It has three great ad- 
vantages. It compels thoughtful men to ask 
what the Church is and what business it has 
to do in the world. It requires the Church 
to ask itself whether it is missing any true 
human service which it ought to be rendering, 
whether there are any wide human relations 
which it is failing to fulfill, or whether on the 
other hand it is involved in weakening com- 
promises and is burdening itself with mis- 
taken tasks. It reveals to the Church the 
loss from its disunion and inefficiency. 

Let me speak a word as to this loss. Let 
the gains of division be granted, — the distri- 
bution of responsibility, the multiplied cen- 
ters of energy, the flexibility and freedom, 
the room for the play of unity of spirit in 
spite of disunity of form, the possibility of 
progress through emulation and mutual attri- 
tion, and all else that can be claimed. There 
is on the other hand the indisputable loss. 
There are things that the Church cannot do, 



the Church and the War 35 

influences it cannot wield, voices it cannot 
utter, moral demands it cannot make, services 
it cannot render. It lost the control of edu- 
cation and of charity through disunion. Our 
ecclesiastical condition is one which unfits us 
for this as for so many others of the social 
functions of the Christian Church. Our rent 
and divided Christendom could not take di- 
rection of the forces and resources of elemen- 
tary education and of charity without such a 
waste of both as we already see in the direc- 
tion of the forces and resources devoted to 
the proper work of the Church; and that the 
public would not endure. (Thompson's 
" Divine Order of Human Society," p. 175.) 
But the loss through this secularization is 
great. And if the Church were really one 
now, or were prepared to act as a unity it 
would render to the nations and the world in 
this special hour a service which nothing else 
can give and for the lack of which mankind 
will suffer for many a day. 

But the Church can come nearer to efficient 
service of the nation and the world to-day, 
even divided as we are, by clearing away as 
much as possible of the confusion of our 
thought as to what the work of the Church 
ought to be in this time of war, and what its 
place is in society. We seem to have for- 
gotten that there are three divine institutions 



36 The Christian Man, 

and we are mixing them up, interchanging 
and commingling their functions, sometimes 
raising unwarranted conflicts between them 
and sometimes allowing unwarranted alli- 
ances. These three institutions for which, 
in spite of the old-fashioned sound of it, a 
special sanction is claimed, are the family, 
the State and the Church. Their confusion 
is not unnatural. The same man belongs to 
all three, and he cannot separate himself 
from any one of them unless, of course, he 
becomes an outlaw from his family, an expa- 
triate of his State, or foregoes his place in the 
Church. And all three of these institutions 
are religious, not the Church alone. The 
family and the State are as truly religious and 
divine as the Church. If any one of the 
three is to be picked out as more religious 
and of diviner sanction than the rest it is the 
family. It came first. It has its ideal in 
the nature of God. It satisfies more of the 
human needs than any other institution. It 
is the fundamental social unit. It is the goal 
of human life. In John's vision of the heav- 
enly city, he saw the nations gathered into the 
family home of God, but he saw no Church 
there. And especially do we need to-day to 
conceive of the State not as supreme and di- 
vine in that German sense whose shadow we 
are pushing back across the world, but as a 



the Church and the War 37 

divine institute none the less in its own sphere, 
and bound to the same moral law that binds 
men and as is witnessed by the Church. Citi- 
zenship is a sacred and religious thing. And 
these three institutions are confused not only 
because the same man is in each one, and be- 
cause all are alike religious, but also because 
they cannot be too sharply differentiated in 
their spheres. Each glides into the others, 
and through the years there have been con- 
stant transitions of function. At first the 
school was entirely in the family, then it 
passed under the Church, and now from the 
Church it has passed to the State. The 
Church itself has moved through a wide 
range of relationships in connection with the 
State. But confused as these three institu- 
tions are, they can and must be seen in some 
distinction of function for the sake of each 
and as against the peril, that the interests of 
mankind may be permanently damaged 
through the absorption by any one of the busi- 
ness of the others or the failure of any one 
to make its own distinctive and necessary con- 
tribution. Roughly, it suffices to character- 
ize the family as the institute of the affec- 
tions, the State as the institute of rights, and 
the Church as the institute of humanity. 

Our concern here is with the last. As the 
institute of humanity what shall we say of 



38 The Christian Man, 

the character, the function, the work of the 
Church in America now ? 

First of all, the Church is not one of a 
hundred agencies. It is one of three. It is 
not a mere appendage, and tool of the State, 
to endorse State action just because it is such, 
to echo the voice of a contemporaneous po- 
litical policy. Such a theory would soon re- 
duce the Church to a nullity. Its members 
belong to other organizations which can ful- 
fill these functions without the trammels of 
which the Church cannot divest itself. And 
these organizations can render a service of 
this character which would soon obscure any 
echo which the Church can contribute. Such 
a theory would destroy the highest service 
which the Church can render, which is to 
bring the State the immeasurable support of 
its independent moral judgment, upholding 
right and condemning wrong. If a war 
projected by the State is wrong the Church 
ought to condemn it. If it is right the 
Church should support it, not because the 
State has proposed it, but because it is right. 
On this basis the Church makes a positive 
moral contribution to the nation. On any 
other basis it undermines the nation's moral 
character. 

But the Church is not a political judge and 
divider. There have been conceptions of the 



the Church and the War 39 

Church which led it to seek such an office. 
In America we hold it to a different sphere. 
It has not been easy to do so. There are 
earnest men who from the outset of the war 
have dreamed that the Church might in some 
great utterance prescribe to the world the 
rearrangements of the life and relations of 
the nations which would end the struggle and 
bring us peace. But there has never been a 
time in this generation, surely not since Janu- 
ary 1 st, 19 14, when any imaginable state- 
ment could have done anything of the sort. 
No statement can do it now. The President 
has made as admirable statements as can be 
made and he can be trusted to make others 
as they become necessary. What is needed 
is deeds. Only acts, words wrought into 
life and sacrifice, can avail now. Invaded 
soil must be restored. Immeasurable wrongs 
must be repaired. The dead cannot be 
avenged. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, 
saith the Lord. But a new world can be 
brought in where the innocent shall not be 
slain. But no phrases of speech or clever 
proclamations can achieve these ends now. 
We are thrown back reverently on a deeper 
word than any we can say, the old word which 
declares that without shedding of blood there 
is no remission of sins. More truth is to be 
spoken, but also more life is to be laid down. 



4-0 The Christian Man, 

If the Church is not a political echo nor a 
political judge, what is it? It is a minister 
of service, a fountain of moral life and duty, 
a witness to enduring and universal princi- 
ples. And its faithful fulfillment of these 
functions now is needed as urgently as ever 
in its history. A deputation from one of the 
Churches asked President Wilson how the 
Church could best support him and serve the 
nation in this hour. The President replied 
by " calling upon the Church to remain true 
to its spiritual ideals and to glorify the prin- 
ciples of justice and of liberty which have 
given it birth." 

And what is the service which in this main- 
tenance of the moral and religious life of the 
nation at full measure the Church must ren- 
der? Primarily and preeminently it is the 
service of keeping elementary principles clear, 
and especially two of these. Not long ago a 
friend, a newspaper man, described to me his 
views of the present social and political order 
and the way out. The escape was by the lit- 
eral application of what he conceived to be 
the teaching and principles of Jesus, which he 
regarded as the only pure common sense 
which had ever been uttered. This teaching 
rested on the assumption of the absolute sa- 
credness of life, and involved the conse- 
quent duty of complete non-resistance. He 



the Church and the War 41 

was led on to speak of a conversation 
with his son, who had asked him whether 
a lie was ever justifiable and to whom 
he had replied that he had troubles enough 
of his own without being assaulted with 
such problems. When, however, the boy 
expressed the view that a lie even to 
save life was never right, his father had 
taken issue with him declaring that the 
obligation of truth was only relative and that 
to set it above the obligation of life was to 
make a fetish of a man's scruples and to sac- 
rifice duty to it. My friend seemed to me, 
however, to have exactly reversed the moral 
principles involved. I believe that Jesus and 
the New Testament teach the relativity of the 
right of life and the absoluteness of the claims 
of truth, and that these are just the funda- 
mental issues of the present hour. If the 
principle of life is absolute and of truth rela- 
tive, why should men die for a cause, how 
can a cause ask men for their lives? But I 
believe it is truth and righteousness which is 
the absolute and sovereign value, for which 
alone we have a right to war, and to count 
life in comparison a secondary thing to be 
poured out without reserve. To these prin- 
ciples the Church needs to bear an unmistak- 
able witness and to build them as a great rock 
under our national thought and purpose. If 



42 . The Christian Man, 

presently when the sacrifices multiply and the 
toll of death is long, men do not hold, on 
principle, that life is nothing at all in com- 
parison with truth, and that we had better all 
die than let wrong triumph, where will our 
strength be found? The certainty of victory 
is with those who see the principle of truth as 
absolute and uncompromisable and who deem 
life of value only for truth's sake. 

The Church is not only a witness to the 
elemental moral principles. It is also a min- 
ister of unselfish service. There are critics 
of the Church who have been asking what it 
has been doing or can do when a nation comes 
to a great struggle such as this where, as it is 
explained, the real issues are material and 
economic, and who have derided the Church 
for its inefficiency and its dissensions. But 
the facts are different. Never before for 
many a day have the Churches been drawn 
together in faith and service as they are to- 
day. No other agencies in the nation were 
more promptly or deeply touched with a com- 
mon spirit of resolve and duty, with a realiza- 
tion of the need of cooperation and concord 
in view of the immensity and the unity of the 
task in the army and in the nation. The 
necessary forms of common action were at 
once established. An object adequately great 
and single showed itself able, as always, to 



the Church and the War 43 

unite men. Divisions, however historically 
significant, were seen to be outworn and un- 
warranted unless they increased the resources 
and capacity of all for the one great task. 
As I have said, there is still a long way to go 
before the Church is where it ought to be, 
but in two ways the Church is making prog- 
ress thither and must make more. (1) 
First, by the principle of unselfishness and 
sacrifice. ^ The war represents the suprem- 
acy of this principle over life, and many men 
have learned its supremacy over money. 
When before has a nation embodied the rec- 
ognition of this in its revenue laws as we 
have done in the Income Tax Law section on 
charitable gifts? But we need to learn this 
lesson as to name and work and institution. 
In one of the army camps I picked up a copy 
of a short life of Huxley and read in it this 
statement of his aims, written in his jour- 
nal, December 31st, 1856, " To smite all 
humbug, however big; to give a nobler tone 
to service; to set an example of abstinence 
from petty personal controversies and of tol- 
eration for everything but lying; to be indif- 
ferent as to whether the work is recognized 
as mine, so long as it is done." Those 
agencies, whatever their character, which act 
with such purpose will emerge from the war 
strongest. Those which seek in any way 



44 The Christian Man, 

their own gain or aggrandizement will pay 
the price of their self-seeking in a time when 
the law of sacrifice must be supreme. (2) 
Secondly, by the spirit of confidence and ap- 
preciation and trust. The task before the 
nation is too immense for men to waste time 
in mere negative criticism. It is a day for 
appreciation of what men are trying to do, 
each in his place, in the government and in 
private life. And the Churches must live and 
work in the same spirit. All of them com- 
bined cannot do all the work which is to be 
done. If some things are attempted in dup- 
lication it need not be wondered at. It is 
better that it should be so than that they 
should not be attempted at all. It is a day to 
practice, the faith in our fellow men of which 
Paul speaks (Eph. i, 15). If we cannot do 
this individually, within the nation, and above 
all, between the Churches, if we are suspi- 
cious of one another and question each other's 
fidelity, or seek our own glory, how can we 
hope to promote international good faith and 
the spirit of confidence and trust between race 
and race? 

And there are services which the nation 
needs of the Church to-day which, with what- 
ever unity it can command, the Church must 
perform, and perform now. 
. The Church has a work to do in making 



the Church and the War 45 

the army. The camps have not been estab- 
lished to provide a field for evangelistic work 
for the Church. But the Church exists to do, 
wherever men are gathered, the work of 
character building which is essential in creat- 
ing an army. In a manly and soldierly ad- 
dress which he made to a group of new of- 
ficers at Camp Wadsworth, General O'Ryan 
declared the three things requisite to the 
building of a strong army to be ( 1 ) personal 
character, (2) discipline and unity, and (3) 
equipment and military technique. The 
fundamental thing was morale and the fiber 
of character in the individual. The great 
foes of such character are the vices against 
which the Church and the nation wage war. 
Never before in history has a government 
thrown around the assembling and training of 
an army such safeguards as those which the 
United States has used in this emergency. 
The moral sense of the nation has been given 
a redoubled confidence in the government by 
what has been done. And it is necessary not 
only to provide just outward restraints and 
protections but also to supply men with in- 
ward fortitude and resolution. The disci- 
pline of the army cannot follow each soldier 
every hour by day and night. There will 
come times when unless he is fortified by firm 
purpose and religious principle he will be 



46 The Christian Man, 

found unprotected and will be overthrown. 
And all moral wreckage, the makers of the 
army clearly see, is folly and waste. To 
train a man to be a soldier, to spend freely 
of the public revenue to make him efficient in 
the work of war, and then to find that he can- 
not fight at all but must be supported by the 
government in a hospital, not only a non-com- 
batant but an incubus upon every fighting man, 
is not warfare, it is military and economic 
idiocy. The nation needs religion function- 
ing with freedom and power in and around 
the camps in its work of making character. 
And religion is needed not to make character 
only but just as much to make power. The 
best soldiers the nation has had from Wash- 
ington to our own day have been Christian 
men. The Civil War produced no general 
of more remarkable power than Stonewall 
Jackson, and Colonel Henderson, his biog- 
rapher, tells us of him that his " religion en- 
tered into every action of his life. No duty, 
however trivial, was begun without asking a 
blessing, or ended without returning thanks. 
'He had long cultivated,' he said, ' the habit 
of connecting the most trivial and customary 
acts of life with a silent prayer.' He took 
the Bible as his guide. ... He prayed 
without ceasing, under fire or in camp. . . . 



the Church and the War 47 

He prayed for help to do his duty, and he 
prayed for success. He knew that 

" More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of ; " 

but he knew also, that prayer is not always 
answered in the way which man would have 
it. He went into battle with supreme confi- 
dence, not, as has been alleged, that the Lord 
had delivered the enemy into his hands, but 
that whatever happened would be the best 
that could happen. And he was as free from 
cant as from self-deception. It may be said 
of Jackson, as has been said so eloquently of 
the men whom, in some respects, he closely 
resembled, that ' his Bible was literally food 
to his understanding and a guide to his con- 
duct. He saw the visible finger of God in 
every incident of life.' " (Henderson, 
" Life of Stonewall Jackson," Vol. I, pp. 61, 
73.) At the end of his picture Col. Hen- 
derson speaks of " the consuming earnestness, 
the absolute fearlessness, whether of danger 
or of responsibility, the utter disregard of 
men and the unquestioning faith in the Al- 
mighty, which made up the individuality 
which men called Stonewall Jackson." We 
need the Stonewalls to-day and it is religion 
that can make them for us. General Persh- 



48 The Christian Man, 

ing evidently so believes. In his dispatch of 
January 18, 191 8, he advised the State De- 
partment: " In the fulfillment of its duty to 
the nation much is expected of our army and 
nothing should be left undone that will help 
in keeping it in the highest state of efficiency. 
I believe the personnel of the army has never 
been equalled and the conduct has been excel- 
lent, but to overcome entirely the conditions 
found here requires fortitude born of great 
courage and lofty spiritual ideas. Counting 
myself responsible for the welfare of our 
men in every respect it is my desire to sur- 
round them with the best influence possible. 
In the fulfillment of this solemn trust it seems 
wise to request the aid of churchmen from 
home." The Church must do the same work 
here as in France. 

The Church has a work to do in conserving 
the religious future of the nation. Its care 
for the young men enrolled in the army is 
essential for the making of the army. It is 
equally essential for the future well being of 
American life. The Government has justifi- 
ably lifted these young men out of our homes 
and communities. The military conscription 
law was one of the most just and prudent 
laws ever enacted. Once the task of the na- 
tion was clear it was the nation's duty to 
apportion that task among its citizens. The 



the Church and the War 49 

financial burden was equitably distributed by 
taxation and loans. The burden of personal 
service was equitably distributed by the draft 
law. It would have been as reasonable to 
provide the funds needed for the war by vol- 
untary subscriptions as to provide the troops 
by voluntary enlistment. And just as the 
allotment of such taxes is an honor and their 
payment a sacred privilege so the conscrip- 
tion of life was an honor and the acceptance 
of personal service a sacred preferment. If 
there was any error at all, it was in not mak- 
ing the conscription cover all other service as 
well as the service of the army. But this 
justified and honoring conscription of men 
laid upon the nation a solemn obligation. It 
was bound to see that the best influences of 
home and community life were, as far as pos- 
sible, provided for these young men. Those 
to whom it is not given to die for the cause 
will come back again. They must come back 
stronger men, ready to carry forward the 
great traditions and institutions of our Amer- 
ican life. Their homes and their churches 
feel that they have a right and a duty to hold 
them fast for their own sake and for the na- 
tion's sake, in the interest of to-day and in 
the interest of to-morrow. And all this is 
the army's own gain. 

The Church has a work to do in enlarging 



50 The Christian Man, 

the moral values and in using to the full the 
moral resources of the nation. The moral 
aims of the war need to be clearly seen and 
the vision must not be allowed to fade. The 
nation is not fighting the war for the war's 
sake. We are fighting it for the sake of Bel- 
gium and France and Armenia and humanity. 
We are fighting it not because we love war 
but because we hate it and see no other way 
of stopping it once and forever. We are 
fighting it for the sake of ending ideals of 
false nationalism, of preventing the purpose 
of world domination by German autocracy. 
As an advertisement of the National Security 
League puts it in offering a reward of $1000 
for " the best suggestion as to how to get to 
the German masses these facts : 

We are fighting for the German masses, not against 
them. 
We are fighting the Prussian Military Autocracy 
Which is forcing thousands of the German 
masses to be killed daily — 
The Autocracy that is making slaves of the masses 
So that Germany can make vassals 
Of the rest of the European Nations. 
That Autocracy that is trying to rule the world by 
force, 
The Autocracy that is preventing peace. 
The United States does not want German land, 
money or business. 



the Church and the War 51 

The United States is fighting for the Liberty of the 
masses — 
For our Liberty — for the Liberty of the World. 
And we will fight until we get 

FREEDOM FOR ALL FOREVER." 

These are some of the clear moral aims of 
the war. Many influences will obscure 
them. The Church needs to keep them 
clear. We are seeking nothing for our- 
selves that we do not want to share with all 
peoples, including the German people. 

In such a struggle material and military 
forces alone will not suffice. There must be 
behind them and in them a moral purpose 
and energy and consecration which will save 
these forces from their own perils and use 
them for the great ideal ends which the Presi- 
dent has stated in ways which satisfy the con- 
science of the American people. It is the 
business of the Church to awaken and sustain 
this purpose and energy and consecration. A 
personal letter from an official of the Govern- 
ment in Washington will state the matter bet- 
ter than any words which I can use : 

" I have discovered that there is a very definite 
limit beyond which it is not proper for the Govern- 
ment to go in affirming moral ideals and mobilizing 
the mental and spiritual forces of the country for 
national service. The State and the Church are 



52 The Christian Man, 

officially disunited, and it is well indeed that this 
is so. 

" But there is a point where the State leaves off 
and the Church begins. And I, as an individual 
Christian man, and not as a functionary of the 
Government, seem to see a great work which the 
Church, as a whole, might take up, at the very point 
where the State must, of logical necessity, lay it 
down. 

" The national propaganda which must be put 
out to serve the purposes of the Government must 
appeal to men to volunteer their lives and their 
services in the national defense ; to give their money 
to humanitarian ^work made imperative by the 
operations of war; to buy bonds which furnish 
money to build armies and navies. 

" All this is necessary to be done, and it is clearly 
within the province of the State to do this. In 
securing these results it is also within the province 
of the State to affirm the accepted national ideals of 
liberty, justice, truth, fairness, and so on, and to 
appeal to the nobler instincts of devotion to the 
common good, self-sacrifice, and standing for prin- 
ciple at the cost of life and treasure. 

" But, looking upon the net result of all this 
Government propaganda, I, as a Christian man, and 
not as a Government functionary, can see that it 
tends mightily to create throughout the country the 
sentiment that ' Victory will be on the side of the 
biggest army.' Therefore we must build the biggest 
army, and fight in the biggest way possible. 

" The State, as such, can do no otherwise. 

" And we see even ministers of the Gospel catch- 



the Church and the War 53 

ing step with this idea which is implied by the 
Government propaganda, and emphasizing the duties 
of citizenship just as the Government is doing, 
which, of course, is all well and good, but they are 
doing it to the exclusion of their higher function of 
emphasizing the spiritual fact that, finally, and 
unquestionably, Right makes might. The biggest 
army that could be imagined must be wisely directed 
or its efforts will not win a victory for the Right, 
and the wisdom which is, therefore, the supreme 
necessity of the Nation, no matter how big its 
armies may be, is a spiritual quality, gained by con- 
tact with the Source of all Wisdom. 

" To give emphasis to this fact, which all spirit- 
ually minded men can see is a national bulwark of 
the first order, is not the function of the State but 
of the Church. 

11 But unless the emphasis which the Church gives 
to this idea is national in its scope it will not be suffi- 
cient to offset, or rather balance, the effect of the 
organized Government propaganda which leaves the 
impression that we shall win only by having the 
biggest armies. 

" Everything that tends in a certain direction will, 
as you know, keep on tending that way, and grow- 
ing more so, unless something commensurate with 
it counteracts it. 

" Now this Government propaganda must go 
right on ; and because it stops short of spiritual 
things, and their relation to national success, it leaves 
the inference that ' God is on the side of the greatest 
armies.' 

" It may not be the intention of the Government 



54 The Christian Man, 

to give this impression, and yet because it can not 
speak frankly -of spiritual forces in relation to the 
final victory, it has the same effect as if the Govern- 
ment ignored spiritual forces and avowedly propa- 
gated the doctrine that ' Victory will be determined 
by Force.' . . . 

" And yet, if the Church as a whole stands for 
any one idea about which there could be no dispute, 
it is the idea that God rules the world and the 
Universe and determines issues by the superior 
weight of moral and spiritual force rather than by 
the preponderance of material forces unsupported 
by Him. 

" Now, it seems to me, that the State and the 
Church are not in conflict, but that it takes both of 
them to produce the perfect balance ; and that if too 
much weight is being put into one side of the scale, 
the other side will go up beyond the balance, and the 
true balance will be lost, and with it all things 
worth while. 

" The remedy for this situation, this growing ten- 
dency towards officially imposed materialism, must 
be found in the constructive action of the Church as 
a whole. 

" The Church as a whole must be caused to see 
and feel that the very foundations of spiritual think- 
ing are threatened if the idea continues to grow by 
State emphasis that ' Dynamite determines the des- 
tiny of nations. Therefore have plenty of it.' 

" The Church must, if true to its responsibilities, 
restore the balance by demonstrating to the minds of 
men that no matter how big our armies may be they 
will not win because of their size, but because of 



the Church and the War 55 

the spiritual force with which they are directed, and 
that the wisdom which will make them effective for 
victory can come only with being right in the sight 
of God, and seeking His guidance in our efforts, 
through organized force, to ' make the world safe 
for democracy.' Can you not devise an organ- 
ized propaganda for the mobilization of all spirit- 
ually minded people, in the Churches and out, Cath- 
olic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile, to reaffirm the 
spiritual ideal that God really governs and that He 
will give the victory, at last, on the basis of right 
tendency, right ideals, and right action. 

" The logical outcome of all spiritual ideas is 
reliance upon the power of prayer. Here, then, is 
the high point of the message which the federated 
Churches should give out to the people as an offset 
to the inferences being drawn from State propa- 
ganda. Let them demonstrate, by all the arts 
known to the Church, that prayer, and the right- 
eousness that comes from right prayer, is what really 
won and established every great good that ever came 
to humanity. Show that Force has been an instru- 
ment in the hands of Righteousness, but that Force 
itself has not won any permanent good. Show that 
what we are fighting for to-day is to dethrone an 
autocracy which rests upon the assumption that 
Might makes Right. 

" My heart is with you, but I have other work to 
do." 

But the Church has this work to do. 

The Church has a work to do also in 
steadying and holding fast the nation when 



$6 The Christian Man, 

the time of tension comes. Superficial en- 
thusiasm may suffice for a little while. Mo- 
tives of pride and anger and indignation and 
interest may last through an hour. But noth- 
ing but an immovable and unselfish moral 
purpose will endure all things. When the 
long struggle really begins, when the casualty 
lists multiply and the shadows fall across the 
land, when the light hearted and the selfish 
grow faint and the temptation to take our 
hands from the plow and turn back with the 
furrow unrun comes in like a flood upon us, 
in that day God pity us if we have no divine 
faith secure against every strain, no purpose 
more firm and resolute than hate to hold us 
true. " Blessed be God," said President 
Lincoln to a Christian delegation in a dark 
hour of the Civil War. " Blessed be God, 
who in an hour like this giveth us the 
Churches." The Christian Church is the 
custodian of the forces which wear down and 
outlast death. All the merely materialistic 
energies and the motives and purposes which 
are kindred to them will go down in the time 
of the last testing. Like John Brown's body 
they will simply molder under us. But John 
Brown's soul? What did it do? What is 
it doing now? Through night and death it 
has come on and the fountains of life which 
fed that soul then will feed our souls now and 



the Church and the War 57 

until this war is won. They can be fed on 
nothing else. We need in our nation now 
the sense of religion-nourished duty which 
sustained our fathers in the two great past 
crises of our history and which alone can sus- 
tain us, a sense of duty which, as Donald 
Hankey said, does not so much endure diffi- 
culty as deride it, a sense of duty which no 
power on earth or under the earth can relax 
until our work is done. 

I will mention one other service which the 
Church must render to the nation in connec- 
tion with the war. It must keep us from de- 
stroying for ourselves what we are fighting 
to keep our enemies from destroying for us 
and for mankind. We are contending 
against injustice and wrong. Can we be 
strong for this contest if we ourselves are 
guilty of wrong and injustice? We are 
fighting Prussianism. Would it not be a 
tragedy if in this warfare the very ideals 
and methods against which we fight should in- 
sidiously conquer us? The Church at least 
must believe in a gospel of truth and right- 
eousness and preach that gospel inflexibly and 
uncowed. And a gospel of truth and right- 
eousness is not a gospel of hate. Such a 
gospel is being preached to us. These sen- 
tences are from a recent pamphlet: "The 
only logical conclusion of Germany's career 



58 The Christian Man, 

of crime and dirty fighting is, at the close of 
the war, the contempt, the aversion and the 
loathing of the civilized world, and a univer- 
sal policy of non-intercourse. Let Germany 
go and live with Austria, and the loathsome 
Turk, in a hell of their own. . . . Through 
her crimes and her dirty fighting, Germany 
has earned the contempt and aversion of the 
world, and it will be paid to her as long as 
civilization endures. . . . Germany, Austria 
and Turkey already have the contempt, the 
scorn and the hatred of the whole world, and 
after the war they should be ostracised and 
shunned for a thousand years." 

It is hard to forgive the moral madness 
beyond belief which brought on the war, its 
enormous wrongs, its pitiful sufferings. It 
is hard to see how God Himself can forgive. 
But He can forgive, and His Spirit and His 
Spirit alone can enable men to forgive. 
\ There has been no more noble incident in 
the war, real or apocryphal, than the story, 
which Amelia Burr has put into verse, of 
the Belgian children coming up at the day's 
ending from their underground school to 
make their way down the ruined village street 
in the lulled cannonade of the evening. One 
older girl led the little flock. Presently they 
came to a still standing crucifix and like duti- 
ful children they stopped for their prayer. 



the Church and the War 59 

" Our Father," they began, and all went well 
as far as " our daily bread." Some of the 
little ones stopped there, for there had been 
that day no daily bread, but the older girl 
carried it bravely on until she came to " As 
we forgive them their trespasses," and then 
she too halted and stopped. A Belgian sol- 
dier standing by with his head bowed and his 
hat in hand while the children prayed heard 
a man's voice take up the prayer and carry it 
through. " Forgive us our trespasses as we 
forgive them their trespasses." The soldier 
looked up and lo, it was the Belgian King. 
If Albert of Belgium, wronged beyond us all, \ 
could forgive, and God more wronged than 
he, who are we that we should hate ? 

And hate and those who incite the nation 
to hate are the foes of our life to-day. 
There cannot be too deep hate of evil prin- 
ciples, but hatred of persons is bad religion, 
bad psychology and bad politics. Hate will 
burn up the national soul in impotence, and 
scorch the national conscience to cinder at a 
time when we need all our power of soul and 
must keep our conscience as clear as the sun. 
" Hatred," says a government bulletin, 
" many say, is an emotion necessary to war. 
The soldier, they say, cannot fight unless he 
hates. Let them ask the soldier; let them 
talk to the veteran who has given and re- 



Go The Christian Man, 

ceived wounds, and they will find that the 
greater hatred is among civilians. Passivity 
makes for an emotion of hatred; a busy man 
thinks mostly of his job. Furthermore, the 
characteristic of good fighters is that they are 
' good sports.' They know the other men 
are ordered to fight as they are ordered, and 
the best soldiers are often those men who 
thoroughly respect their foe. ... As a 
matter of practical wisdom, we want abiding 
truth, for it makes abiding conviction. Emo- 
tions may wave and surge. They are read- 
ily stirred by some story, some incident about 
some individual soldier. Frightful resolves 
thus are easily inspired. But let the next 
man come with a better story, let a superior 
orator appear a few days later and there is 
a reaction. The emotion subsides or even 
turns the other way. 

" On the other hand, feelings built on be- 
liefs, beliefs that are founded on profound 
convictions, and convictions dug deep into. the 
rock of fundamental fact — these are not 
swayed and stirred like waves in a storm. 
Not an appeal to emotionalism, but an appeal 
to the emotions through conviction by state- 
ment of facts secures true converts, converts 
who when once convinced remain convinced." 

We need all that the Christian Church can 
do for us to keep our ideals unsullied and un- 



the Church arid the War 61 

confused, to make us penitent for our own 
sins and to win us the strength of those who 
have sought God's forgiveness, to hold be- 
fore us and to impose upon us the enduring 
and universal principles to which we must be 
true in our own spirit and in all our acts if 
we are to make those principles prevail in the 
world. I mean the principles of love and 
service and freedom, of a righteous social 
and economic order, of just human relation- 
ships in the state and among the nations. If 
the Church has no discernment of these prin- 
ciples or no courage to utter them we can do 
without it. If it does discern them and is not 
afraid to declare them, the world is ready as 
it never was before to hear its voice. 

There is one thing more to say. It is said 
in a recent letter from a friend on the other 
side. " The Church here," he writes, " is in 
the midst of a vast and terrifying problem. 
The stage has long since gotten beyond the 
control of men. If I were not a Christian I 
would say that all is lost." Our moral duty 
in this war is clear, but we can never do it 
except by the power of God living in the 
Risen Lord. Our need has got beyond the 
power of man. No human minds or wills 
are adequate for this work of tearing down 
an old world and building up a new. It can- 
not be done by war alone. The war itself 



62 The Christian Man 



even cannot accomplish the work which is 
allotted to it in God's will, unsupplemented 
by new ideals, new purposes, new conditions, 
new characters, a new life in men and nations. 
And that new life is available in one place 
alone, that is in God in Christ. To believe 
this and to try to live by this belief is the high- 
est loyalty. It is the divine spring of the 
only national loyalty that can meet every 
strain and fulfill every task. Is the Church 
ready to pay the price of such loyalty in the 
love and purity and justice of its moral life in 
order that it may be the light of the nation in 
these days of darkness, the soul of the nation 
in these days of need? 



Ill 

THE WORLD PROBLEM AND CHRISTIANITY 

The world problem naturally shapes itself 
for us to-day as the problem of the world 
war, in which Germany and her three allies 
are arrayed against almost all the rest of 
mankind. And in truth the war does reach 
in its influence and make that influence con- 
sciously felt to the remotest corners of the 
earth. There are few regions where life in 
its most practical and pressing needs has not 
seen the consequences of the derangement of 
exchange and of the processes of trade and 
industry and the upheaval of humanity occa- 
sioned by the war. Railroads have stopped 
in the heart of the jungle because there were 
no engineers or materials to complete them. 
Children have starved in unknown villages 
for want of food which the war has delayed 
or consumed or left unproduced. The most 
isolated farmer in our own land, the tribes in 
inland Africa, country folk in far interior 
China, and the miners underground have 
alike been involved. The idea of a divided 
63 



64 The Christian Man, 

human interest is gone forever. We know 
that for good or for ill the world is one and 
that it must live a common life. All that 
happens is of significance to all who live. 

And the issues which are at stake in the 
war are of concern to all humanity. 
Whether power or service shall be the domi- 
nant principle of national life, whether the 
will to power is self-justifying and exempt 
from the law of righteousness and love or 
must be subdued to duty and brotherhood, 
whether all men are to be free to govern their 
states or whether a few men are to govern all 
men through the state, whether or not democ- 
racy is to be tolerated in the earth — these 
are questions in whose answers through this 
war every man in the world and all the men 
who are to come after us are concerned. 

But while the war is evidence of the unity 
and magnitude of the world problem it is 
not the whole world problem. This prob- 
lem was all here before the war began. It 
will be here when the war is over. It will be 
modified. We hope that some elements of 
it will have disappeared. But it remains to 
be seen how much war will have done to alter 
the fundamental qualities. War has its own 
alchemy and, as we know from our national 
history, there are some massive and perma- 
nent effects which it can produce. It can put 



the Church and the War 65 

an end to some social and political principles. 
It can establish against resistance some con- 
trary principles. But in the main the work 
of war is structural and not organic, and 
when this war has been won we shall find our- 
selves face to face with the old and ever new 
problems of life and sin. Human nature will 
be what it is. We shall have cleared the 
ground of some noxious growths and some 
intolerable barriers to true human progress. 
Human institutions will have been given an 
upward lift in the spiral of history. But 
how different will man be? 

And even now while the war is in progress 
it is not the whole of human life. It touches 
all things, but it does not halt the movement 
of forces which will affect the whole future 
for us and for other nations and to which 
heed must be given now. It is said some- 
times that the war is like a house afire and 
that all the owner's attention must be given 
to that fire. But suppose he owns several 
houses and while he is absorbed in saving one, 
incendiaries are kindling fires in the others. 
Our only relations are not with our allies in 
peace and our enemies in war. We have now 
relations with the Far East and with Latin 
America which must be dealt with in terms 
of long time. And within America subtle 
changes are taking place. Great interests 



66 The Christian Man, 

are playing their hands with consummate skill 
behind the unity of our national movement 
in the war. They are thinking forward and 
improving every opportunity to prepare the 
way for what they want when the war is 
done. Social and economic changes of the 
deepest meaning are going on. Are they to 
be left to chance or is thought to be spent 
upon their wise direction? 

No episode or epoch in history is detach- 
able, to be separated like a compartment. 
Every stage grows organically out of what 
preceded it and leads on organically to what 
comes after. In our effort to think of the 
world problem clearly in order to understand 
it and determine our duty regarding it we 
have to make the effort to isolate it and to 
separate its elements, but we need to remind 
ourselves that this cannot really be done, that 
life and history are an organic whole, a great 
web of tissues, causes and consequences, 
forces and effects inextricably interlaced. 
What we are living through now is the fruit- 
age of the long past and we are sowing to- 
day for our children's reaping to-morrow. 

In this view, if men do not prepare in ad- 
vance for the solution of their problems it is 
too late to prepare when the time for the 
solution arrives. The forces of good which 
are to cope with forces of evil must be devel- 



the Church and the War 67 

oped contemporaneously with them. This is 
the comfort of our faith in God. We be- 
lieve that in our national life in the past and 
to-day, and in the life of all the world, God 
prepares against all human need and the de- 
mand of every human problem the supply of 
His wisdom and strength. 

As we look around us to-day and behind 
and before, can we discern the outlines of the 
great world problem which must be worked 
through and can we find the forces which are 
adequate for its solution? This is not mere 
wasteful speculation at this time. We shall 
find that we need to carry us through this war 
all the inspiration and deep resolves which 
great aims and ends can give. One of our 
dangers is that if the war lasts long and our 
idealisms fade and we despair of accomplish- 
ing the results for which we went into the 
war, if behind the armies men begin to talk of 
our duty to develop and perpetuate among 
ourselves the very things which brought on 
the war and which have crushed the nations 
— that then the men in the armies will begin 
to say: " What is the use? Even if we 
win, we fail. Let us stop now." The only 
way to meet that danger is to keep clear and 
bright before men's eyes the hope of a new 
and different world worth any sacrifice. 
Motives drawn from the past will decay and 



68 The Christian Man, 

die. The-will-that-cannot-be-broken to make 
right prevail must be fed from hope and faith 
in a new and better day. Our Lord Himself 
endured for the joy which was set before 
Him. If the day after the war is to be like 
the day before or worse, what, men will ask, 
was the use of it all? Well, it is not to be 
the same day. But in order that it may not 
be we need to try to see what the old and long 
continuing elements of the world problem are 
and to find the forces which can contend with 
them. 

One element in the world problem has been 
and will continue to be the imperfect develop- 
ment of democracy. We believe in democ- 
racy and our belief has a religious basis. 
The German political theory has rejected it 
and maintained instead a monarchical ideal 
with a definite religious and theocratic char- 
acter. 

" It is not at first apparent what necessary con- 
nection there is between monarchical government 
and Christian faith. For Bismarck they were ever 
inseparably bound together; nothing but religious 
belief would have reconciled him to a form of gov- 
ernment so repugnant to natural human reason. 
' If I were not a Christian, I would be a Repub- 
lican,' he said many years later; in Christianity he 
found the only support against revolution and so- 
cialism. He was not the man to be beguiled by 



the Church and the War 69 

romantic sentiment; he was not a courtier to be 
blinded by the pomp and ceremony of royalty; he 
was too stubborn and independent to acquiesce in 
the arbitrary rule of a single man. He could only 
obey the king if the king himself held his authority 
as the representative of a higher power. Bismarck 
was accustomed to follow out his thought to its 
conclusions. To whom did the King owe his 
power? There was only one alternative: to the 
people or to God. If to the people, then it was a 
mere question of convenience whether the monarchy 
were continued in form; there was little to choose 
between a constitutional monarchy where the king 
was appointed by the people and controlled by Par- 
liament, and an avowed republic. This was the 
principle held by nearly all his contemporaries. He 
deliberately rejected it. He did not hold that the 
voice of the people was the voice of God. This be- 
lief did not satisfy his moral sense ; it seemed in pub- 
lic life to leave all to interest and ambition and noth- 
ing to duty. It did not satisfy his critical intellect; 
the word ' people ' was to him a vague idea. The 
service of the people or of the King by the Grace of 
God, this was the struggle which was soon to be 
fought out. 

"It is this conception of government which un- 
derlies a speech which Bismarck addressed to the 
Prussian Chamber in 1848. ' The strife of princi- 
ples which during this year has shattered Europe to 
its foundations is one in which no compromise is 
possible. They rest on opposite bases. The one 
draws its law from what is called the will of the 
people, in truth, however, from the law of the 



70 The Christian Man, 

strongest on the barricades. The other rests on 
authority created by God, an authority by the grace 
of God, and seeks its development in organic connec- 
tion with the existing and constitutional legal status. 
. . . The decision on these principles will come not 
by Parliamentary debate, not by majorities of eleven 
votes; sooner or later the God who directs the bat- 
tle will cast his iron dice.' ( Headlam, " Bismarck," 
PP- l 1 -!!, 53, quoted by Curtis, " The Common- 
wealth of Nations," p. 85-86.) 

This deliberate rejection of democracy was 
the perpetuation of the political principle of 
the " Holy Alliance." The first article of 
the secret treaty signed at Verona November 
22, 1822, by the parties to the Alliance read: 

" The high contracting powers, being convinced 
that the system of representative government is 
equally as incompatible with the monarchical princi- 
ples as the maxim of the sovereignty of the people 
with the divine right, engage mutually, in the most 
solemn manner, to use all their efforts to put an end 
to the system of representative governments, in what- 
ever country it may exist in Europe, and to prevent 
its being introduced in those countries where it is 
not yet known." (Quoted by Curtis, "The Com- 
monwealth of Nations," p. 87.) 

Here, in the interest of a religious theory 
of government, democracy is rejected. If he 
had not been a Christian, Bismarck might 
have believed in democracy ! We believe in 
democracy because we are Christians. We 



the Church and the War 71 

have the Christian faith in man, in equality 
of opportunity and of privilege, in God's 
guidance of society and in the accessibility 
of the common man to the same divine direc- 
tion which is available for a king. There is 
no more divine right behind a king than there 
is behind a carpenter or coal miner or brick- 
layer, and the massed conscience and convic- 
tion of many common men honestly seeking 
their onward way we trust more than the will 
and wisdom of any king. And we believe 
that even if the king were right and the mass 
of common men wrong, it would be better for 
the world to let the common men govern 
themselves. It may be a poorer govern- 
ment, but it will be a better people. We be- 
lieve in an imperfect democracy as better 
than any alternative, no matter what it may 
be. 

But the problem is to perfect our democ- 
racy. It is far from perfect now. Nation- 
ally and internationally it is inefficient. We 
have the advantage of its freedom of move- 
ment, its fluid adaptiveness, its hopefulness. 
But we have the disadvantage of its lack of 
discipline and coordination, its fickleness, its 
suspicion and distrustfulness. We count the 
gains greater than the losses, but we cannot 
figure out yet from our balance sheet any 
national or international millennium. 



72 The Christian Man, 

We are accustomed also to construe our 
democracy in too narrow terms. Who con- 
stitute the people ? It is not simply the adult 
male citizens, nor all the contemporaneous 
generation. The dead live in us, and also 
the unborn, and they both have rights. The 
past and the future are our true environment 
in history. Loyalty in a democracy too often 
forgets to look behind and before, and pays 
the penalty in the inefficiency always due to 
an organism's imperfect relation to its envi- 
ronment. 

Our democracy is deficient still in general 
economic justice. For a generation our life 
has been a long story of conflict between 
classes and especially between the classes 
crudely called " capital " and " labor/' And 
yet the great majority of us who have had to 
bear the brunt and pay the cost have not 
really been counted in either party. The 
whole democracy has been involved in a 
struggle between two small minority sections. 

International democracy has been unequal 
to the forces which have assailed it. In the 
summer of 19 14 the great masses of common 
men in the European nations cherished no ill 
will, nation against nation. Their thoughts 
were friendly human thoughts and they de- 
sired only to live at peace in their own homes 
and to go about their own tasks. But inter- 



the Church and the War 73 

ests of dynasties, which did not believe in de- 
mocracies, manipulating the compulsions of 
corporate national life and working with 
weapons of secret diplomacy and of sinister 
influence which democracy had not yet 
wrenched from their hands, crushed into ruins 
the national democratic sentiments and 
plunged the world into a war which it ab- 
horred. Crude and groping as it was, the 
democracy which the world had slowly 
wrought out would never have made such a 
mess of the earth. Other forces duped it. 
It is resolved now to take things in its own 
hands and to make safe room for its free de- 
velopment. But can it change and recreate 
itself? Does it know what it ought to be? 
Are its purposes right ? Is it willing to make 
all needful sacrifices? Even if its heart is 
open to better things has it a mind to discern 
them and a will to replace them when dis- 
cerned by still better things that will then be 
disclosed? If democracy is to be the prin- 
ciple of society, it must be a wholesome and 
progressive and righteous democracy. 

A second element in the world problem in 
the past, from which we are trying to escape 
and from which escape is appallingly diffi- 
cult, is the claim of national trusteeship to be 
above the moral law. This is an old, old 
claim. There was a time when it was set up 



74 The Christian Man, 

as a valid principle for smaller units than 
nationalities. Great feudal lords acted upon 
it until at last they were tamed by the move- 
ment of time and the moral law came to be 
supreme in relations between class and class 
and man and man within the modern state. 
The law was violated often enough, but its 
obligation was acknowledged and the ac- 
knowledgment has been working out its own 
enlarging enforcement. But the state was 
still held as a super-moral thing and this 
theory is one of the great issues of the pres- 
ent struggle. 

In the very struggle itself the danger is 
that men may accept the theory in order to 
defeat it. And one wonders whether if one 
nation allows itself to act contrary to the 
moral law in order to prevent another nation 
from doing so, any real contribution has been 
made to human progress. There are some 
who say that we must fight with whatever 
weapons and spirit are necessary to achieve 
the end. To undo our foe we must outdo 
him. 

" In order to crush this monstrous growth," says 
an English preacher whose message is addressed to 
his day with singular fearlessness and power, " what 
do we who hate it have to do ? We have kept our- 
selves free from the more violent outrages of inter- 
national law, and we believe that our soldiers, even 



the Church and the War 75 

if they were let free in the flush of victory upon 
German soil, would never repeat the story of Belgian 
atrocities. But we do find that to crush an enemy 
in war one does have to consider military necessities 
before ideal principles. Fortunately we have a 
mighty navy which is able to exert pressure in a 
quite gentlemanly way. We can trust the chivalry, 
the humanity, the unfailing good humor of our men 
to treat the enemy when wounded or prisoners, with 
kindness and honor. But does any one suppose that 
in the frightful struggles of a bayonet charge all 
soldiers do not have to put off the civilized gentle- 
man and fight like devils? The tragedy is that to 
crush this monstrous manifestation we have to adopt 
much the same methods and rely upon the same prim- 
itive passions. Whoever is responsible for recalling 
these things to life, they are not dead, and they will 
not be the quicker extinguished for the temporary 
license that has had to be granted to them. 

" The truth is, behind the European man, not to 
mention the European woman, there is a savage, 
and if we are going to prepare for wars and wage 
wars, from whatever motive, then we shall want 
that savage kept alive. With characteristic frank- 
ness and brutality this has been recognized in Ger- 
many. It has even become a philosophy. In other 
countries, and notably in our own, we do not discuss 
this sort of thing. Like prostitution, it is not talked 
about in polite circles, but the safety of our homes 
is built upon it all the same. Germany has thrown 
over the restraints of sentimentalism and has in 
greater degree than other nationalities repudiated 
Christianity as inapplicable to State affairs and In- 



J 6 The Christian Man, 

ternational relationships. Other countries have not 
openly admitted this to be necessary, but in practice 
we all have to follow much the same course." 
(Orchard, "The Outlook for Religion," p. 6 f.) 

In our inexperience and unsaddened ideal- 
ism we do not and will not believe this. We 
had a great war once, the greatest of all wars 
until this chaos fell, and in that war soldiers 
and armies and commanders, North and 
South, bore themselves as Christian men. It 
was war and it had the horrors of war, death 
and havoc and destruction. But honor was 
alive and chivalry. And we still believe, 
fresh and untried as we are in this war, that 
we can keep the spirit of the days of old. 
And we believe it firmly in the case of the 
nation. The idealistic moral aims and the 
broad principles of political justice and the 
purposes of sincere world service which the 
President has stated again and again are ac- 
cepted by the nation. We believe that we 
are acting as a Christian nation and in a 
Christian spirit. We are laying down our 
lives for our brethren. If we are not obey- 
ing as a nation the same moral law which 
holds between man and man we are self- 
deceived. And if any one among ourselves 
or among our allies is making the war a cloak 
for selfish or sinister purposes or, in carrying 



the Church and the War 77 

on the war, is surrendering the principles 
which we think we are defending, he is de- 
ceiving us and betraying the good faith of 
America. 

It is hard always for the true elements and 
ideals of a nation to control the nation's pol- 
icy. There have been voices in our own land 
which have proclaimed the exemption of the 
nation from the law of absolute righteousness, 
and influential voices to-day advocate the 
frank recognition of the right of the nation to 
consider first not any sentiment of the moral 
law, but the supposed right of its self-in- 
terest. 

" All modern wars between nations," writes " An 
American Jurist," " are in the last analysis founded 
on national interest and national honor, which are 
almost identical terms. Other causes may be as- 
signed by political parties, and in popular govern- 
ments other causes are often necessarily assigned 
when the citizenship is indifferent to the national 
honor or oblivious of the urgency of the paramount 
national interest. . . . That America was justified 
in her declaration of war for many reasons not stated 
by the President, the world, in the end, will con- 
cede. Her imperiled national interests alone af- 
forded ample justification for such a declaration. 
But in pragmatic England and in practical Amer- 
ica political and national movements are singularly 
promoted by sentimental considerations, sometimes 
pertinent, at others irrevelant, but always skillfully 



78 The Christian Man, 

manipulated by those more discerning public men 
who have closer at heart the national interests and 
well-being, and who themselves need no other in- 
centive besides the national interests for even such 
an extreme action as public war. 

" For the honor of humanity it is sad to have to 
admit that sentiment of itself is never a valid reason 
of state for extreme national measures. ... It is 
the national interest and honor alone which, in the 
end, control the external actions of a state. In any 
discussion of the problems involved in this war senti- 
ment, therefore, should be allowed to play only a 
minor part. Alliances between nations are not de- 
termined by considerations of sentiment. Common 
interests and advantages for the time being afford 
the sufficient inducement for either defensive or of- 
fensive alliances of nations." (The New York 
Times, January 2, 191 8.) 

But it is part of our ancient blindness to 
assume that national interests must conflict. 
If we regard the moral law as not binding be- 
tween states and seek to build a world of 
antagonistic interests we shall indeed have 
perpetual strife. But we are sick of this idea 
and are ready for another long step onward 
in the way of human progress. We have our 
opportunity through the war to effect an or- 
ganization of the nations which should bring 
them under such a just and mutually helpful 
order as binds in closer bonds the widely 
varied interests of our American Union. 



the Church and the War 79 

" We believe," says the Report on Reconstruction 
of the Sub-Committee of the British Labor Party, 
" that nations are in no way damaged by each other's 
economic prosperity or commercial progress; but, 
on the contrary, that they are actually themselves 
mutually enriched thereby. We would therefore 
put an end to the old entanglements and mystifica- 
tions of secret diplomacy and the formation of 
leagues against leagues. We stand for the immedi- 
ate establishment, actually as a part of the treaty 
of peace with which the present war will end, of a 
universal league or society of nations, a superna- 
tional authority, with an international high court to 
try all justiciable issues between nations; an inter- 
national legislature to enact such common laws as 
can be mutually agreed upon, and an international 
council of mediation to endeavor to settle without 
ultimate conflict even those disputes which are not 
justiciable. We would have all the nations of the 
world most solemnly undertake and promise to make 
common cause against any one of them that broke 
away from this fundamental agreement. The world 
has suffered too much from war for the Labor party 
to have any other policy than that of lasting peace." 
{The New Republic, February 16, 191 8.) 

And this is not the dream of Christian ideal- 
ists and labor visionaries. It is the word of 
the men who saw all that brought on the war, 
who saw its full inward meaning, and who 
cannot bear the thought of the transmission 
of the present world order as a curse to our 
children. 



80 The Christian Man, 

" Permanent peace," says Viscount Grey, " has 
hitherto been an ideal; will a League of Nations or 
some concrete proposal of that kind become prac- 
ticable after this war? Will the ideal come within 
the limits of practical, effective politics? . . . My 
own hope and belief is that it will. This war will 
bring about a new order of things. In domestic af- 
fairs old questions will be swept off the board of 
politics by new problems and new questions, to 
which many of the old phrases, the old formulas 
and previous points of view will not be applicable, 
and new men will perhaps be needed to solve the new 
problems. And in international politics new ideas 
may prevail, and things hitherto impossible may be- 
come possible. How much becomes possible will 
depend upon the change effected by the experience 
of this war, not so much in men's heads as in their 
hearts and feelings, and this we shall not know fully 
till the millions of men who have fought at the front 
are settled at home again and take their places in 
civil and political life in free democracies. ... If 
as a result of this war men of all nations will desire 
in future to stamp out the first sign of war as they 
would a forest fire or the plague, then the world may 
have peace and a security that it has never yet 
known. If that is not the result, then the lot of 
mankind in this epoch of its history will be more 
desperate than in the darkest and most cruel ages, 
for civilized nations will prepare and perfect the 
destructive inventions of science, and these will be 
used to the point of mutual extermination. Militar- 
ism and civilization are now incompatible, and na- 
tions must attain some greater measure of interna- 



the Church and the War 81 

tional self-control than has previously been thought 
possible if civilization is to progress or even to be 
preserved." {International Conciliation, Novem- 
ber, 19 1 7.) 

The nations must be bound to the moral 
law. 

A third element in the world problem is the 
retarding or the breaking down of the proc- 
esses of social evolution and human progress 
for want of adequate agents to carry them 
forward. A case can be made out for theo- 
cratic government, but it is impracticable, if 
for no other reason, because no human agent 
can stand up under the burden of theocratic 
responsibility. And although democracy dis- 
tributes the burden widely, the inadequacy of 
those on whom it is laid makes itself felt as 
surely and as fatally. We have not failed in 
the past, nor are we failing now for want of 
ideals. Our goals stand out clearly. We 
want peace and justice, equal opportunity, 
" the democratic control of industry/' " the 
surplus wealth for the common good," and 
enough else which it is easy to describe. But 
how are we to get these things? There are 
no doubt economic and political processes to 
be thought out and applied. But will they 
give them to us ? It is true that the problems 
of society and of the world cannot be solved 



82 The Christian Man, 

by good will alone. But neither can they be 
solved by economic or legal prescription. 
They require men both of good will and of 
intelligence, equal to the weight of the move- 
ment they must carry forward. 

The acuteness of this need of men is no- 
where more clearly seen than in China to-day. 
It is not clearer in America or in Europe. 
China is seeking to compass in one generation 
the experience which the Western nations 
have spread over two thousand years. 
There is no reason why China should not 
make this effort. It would be absurd for her 
to set out to travel the whole road over which 
we have come as slowly as we have traveled 
it. If she should try to do so, by the time 
she had caught up we would be two thousand 
years more ahead or, at least, apart. But 
the attempt to condense all this experience, to 
swing a race through such immense cycles of 
change in a single generation, is enough to 
make even the oldest nation dizzy. And the 
effort has broken down in one place and been 
blocked in another, not for any want of good 
will, or clear ideals, but for want of men. 
And the situation is even more tragic with 
regard to the women of Asia. A yet more 
rapid movement is sweeping them on. It 
may almost be said that they have double the 
distance to travel that lies before the men. 



the Church and the War 83 

Where are the women who are capable of 
carrying through in a decade or two such 
millennial processes of transformation? 

And this problem of China is our problem 
too. We know in part what kind of a world 
ought to be rebuilt on the ruins of the old. 
The trouble is that there are not men enough 
to do the rebuilding. The new order re- 
quires a new man. Saint Brice, caustically 
criticizing President Wilson's address before 
the Senate on January 24, 19 17, declared in 
the Paris Journal: 

" The situation would appear inextricable if we 
did not realize how the pursuit of a fixed idea may 
lead astray. Wilson is haunted by the idea of in- 
augurating the golden age of universal brotherhood. 
Naturally, general disarmament is the basis of this 
system. The only thing lacking for the realization 
of this admirable conception is a new humanity. 
Does Wilson pretend to be able to change human- 
ity?" 

Human progress does not need to wait for 
the total perfection of humanity. We have 
got rid of many evils even if humanity has 
not as yet been so greatly changed and we 
hope that we can get rid of war too with 
humanity as it is or as it is going to be after 
this war. But Saint Brice's demand is just. 
The President would doubtless join him in it. 



84 The Christian Man, 

Man himself is still the greatest element in 
his own problem. And if we want him 
changed after the war we must get him to 
work now on the changes that are necessary 
and to confront him to-day with the condi- 
tions which he will have to confront when 
the objects of the war have been attained and 
with which he will be able to deal then only 
if he has seen them and fitted himself for 
them now. 

" The shallow objection that a nation at war must 
not think about the object of the war, but only about 
the waging of it, will be far from a nation that is 
at war only to establish peace. Nor is thought about 
the object of the war superfluous. For war de- 
pends upon prejudices and assumptions which are 
rooted deep in the minds of all men and women. 
It is not enough to wish to end war. We must root 
up the errors that foster it. And that requires a 
process of intellectual conversion which, if it is to be 
achieved in time, must be achieved even while the 
war is raging. It is with no fear that this book may 
weaken the determination of the reader that I lay 
it before him. It is in the hope that it may at once 
strengthen and enlighten him. For, though the war 
may be won merely by arms, the peace cannot. The 
peace can only be won by thought and will." (G. 
Lowes Dickinson, " The Choice Before Us.") 

A fourth tenacious and evil element in the 
world problem is racial suspicion and inequal- 
ity. The contraction of the world has in- 



the Church and the War 85 

creased this peril. So long as the means of 
communication were few and the different 
races occupied separated homes, racial prej- 
udice and friction were of small consequence. 
There was irritation here and there along the 
border lines, but time worked out tolerable 
adjustments even in the relations of subject 
Christian nations living in the midst of Mo- 
hammedans. But as the world shrank 
through the application of steam and elec- 
tricity to the processes of inter-communica- 
tion, the danger of race pride and injustice 
became ever greater and greater. The 
emancipation and rapid increase of the negro 
in the United States produced what Morley 
in his " Recollections " calls the hardest of all 
the " insoluble problems " of great states 
(Morley, " Recollections," Vol. II, p. 336 
f.) , but which has yet been handled with less 
friction than any other so great problem any- 
where. Across a hundred racial chasms the 
last generation has witnessed the interplay of 
these passions of misunderstanding and dis- 
trust. 

The old conceptions of the inevitable hos- 
tility of trade, of commercial competition as 
involving, of necessity, disadvantage on one 
side if there is to be advantage on the other, 
of the impossibility of friendly rivalry or of 
international cooperation intensify this peril 



86 The Christian Man, 

of race antagonism. The words of Con- 
gressman Mann in the debate on the Jones 
Bill relating to our tenure of the Philippine 
Islands, embodied these old conceptions and 
warned us of what those who honestly hold 
these views believe is in store for us. " I 
have no doubt," said Mr. Mann, " that con- 
flict will come between the Far East and the 
Far West across the Pacific Ocean. All 
which is taking place in the world, the logic 
of the history of the human race up to now, 
teaches us that the avoidance of this conflict 
is impossible. I hope it will be only a com- 
mercial conflict. I hope war may not come, 
that there will be no conflict of arms, but I 
have little faith that in this world of ours 
people and races are able to meet in competi- 
tion for a long period without armed conflict. 
A fight for commercial supremacy leads in the 
end to a fight with arms, because that is the 
final arbiter between nations." And one of 
our newspapers which constantly preaches 
race suspicion declares emphatically, " The 
war in Europe, hideous as it is, is merely a 
family quarrel compared to the terrible strug- 
gle that will some day be fought to a finish 
between the white and the yellow races for 
the domination of the world. . . . The only 
battles which count are the battles which 
saved the white races from subjugation by 



the Church and the War 87 

the yellow races, and the only thing of real 
importance to-day is the rescue of the white 
races from conditions which make their sub- 
jugation by the yellow races possible. . . . 
Is it not time that the white nations settled 
their quarrels among themselves and made 
preparations to meet their one real danger, 
the menace to Christianity, to Occidental 
standards and ideals, to the white man's civ- 
ilization, which the constantly growing power 
and aggression of the yellow races contin- 
ually and increasingly threaten? " And this 
same paper has put its appeal with regard to 
the Japanese especially into verse. One 
stanza and the chorus will suffice: 

"LOOK OUT! CALIFORNIA — BEWARE! 

" They tell us that Uncle Sam 
Would lie down like a lamb, 
But he doesn't understand the situation. 
He says war talk must cease 
While he feeds the dove of Peace, 
But he doesn't know the Peril to the Nation. 
But something's going to happen 
That will shake things up, perhaps, 
If we don't start to clean out the Japs ! 

They lurk upon thy shores, California ! 
They watch behind thy doors, California! 
They're a hundred thousand strong, 
And they won't be hiding long ; 



88 The Christian Man, 

There's nothing that the dastards would not dare ! 
They are soldiers to a man, 
With the schemes of old Japan ! 
Look out ! California ! Beware ! " 

It may be hoped that this principle of de- 
liberate race suspicion and injustice will not 
poison and control our whole national spirit 
or be allowed to shape national policies. But 
there have been times before in our history 
when a spirit of racial unfairness has gained 
the upperhand of the day and of the 
wholesome good intent of the American 
people. Abraham Lincoln and General 
Grant believed that it had done so in the 
Mexican War. Our own country has the 
purest and most honorable history of diplo- 
matic relations, of treaty making and of 
treaty keeping of any country in the world, 
but more than once we have failed in our 
word. Mr. Taft has summed up the record 
of failures in the case of China. Bishop 
Whipple tells in his autobiography of the 
long struggle, in which he was one of the 
leaders, for justice to the American In- 
dian. Little by little his lands were taken 
from him. He was driven westward from 
the East and eastward from the West. 
Hemmed in by the encircling and ever-con- 
tracting lines of white encroachment his hunt- 



the Church and the War 89 

ing-grounds were destroyed, the money prom- 
ised him was squandered before it reached 
him, or, if it reached him, was made an occa- 
sion of debauching him, his manhood was 
ruined by the trade in liquor, vices of which 
he never knew were introduced, and the sol- 
emn treaties made with him by the govern- 
ment were broken. If this seems now long 
ago and if we believe that no such history 
could be repeated, we need to be sure that we 
are racially fair and just to the Latin-Ameri- 
can races and to the peoples of the Far East 
to-day. We shall have no peace and rest in 
a world where the gulfs of race are unbridged 
by sympathy and confidence and generosity 
and justice. 

A fifth element of the world problem is the 
resistance of national individualism to the 
spirit of world brotherhood and to the com- 
mon interest of humanity. Human history 
is coming about now in one of its great cycles. 
In the Roman Empire men had nearly real- 
ized a world state and the Roman peace lay 
for centuries upon the Mediterranean world. 
But the Roman Empire broke down. The 
great adventurers expanded the ranges of the 
world. New states came into being. For 
five hundred years men were engrossed in 
developing the ideas and institutions of na- 
tionalism. And "ever since the world-state 



90 The Christian Man, 

ideals of the Middle Ages were left behind, 
this principle has been the touchstone of true 
statesmanship. The reputation of a states- 
man, as well as his permanent influence on 
human affairs, depends on his power to un- 
derstand and aid the historical evolution, 
from out the mediaeval chaos, of strong na- 
tional states. Genius could not countervail 
this law of development. Even Napoleon 
was unsuccessful whenever his policy opposed 
the innate strength of nationalism. . . . The 
cosmopolitanism of the Middle Ages and of 
the Renaissance, the dreams of world unity, 
have been replaced by a set of narrower na- 
tional ideals concerning customs, laws, litera- 
ture, and art, — by a community of independ- 
ent states, each striving to realize to the full- 
est its individual aptitudes and characteristics. 
It is not necessary to infer from this a uni- 
versal reign of chauvinism. The idea of the 
general solidarity of mankind is still strong 
enough to restrain national action in some 
measure." (Reinsch, " World Politics," pp. 
1-6.) Professor Reinsch wrote these words 
in brighter and more hopeful days when no 
men believed, except those who were prepar- 
ing it, that such a day of self-wrought doom 
could fall upon mankind as we must live 
through now. We rejoice in all the gains of 



the Church and the War 91 

this national differentiation in the past and 
we do not wish to lose them but we are re- 
solved to find some way of retaining them 
and yet of saving a world community too. 
If this is to be done we see now that two 
things are essential. One is a new spirit of 
universalism. We may call it by many 
names. But however we name it — brother- 
hood, the spirit of humanity, international- 
ism — we have to come to it and to accept 
it as the new principle of human government 
and relationships. The other necessity is 
some instrumentality of international asso- 
ciation by which the gains of a world peace in 
righteousness may be won and held without 
sacrifice of national personality. There are 
multitudes of men engaged in this war and 
ready to make any sacrifices for its just end- 
ing who will not be content but will think 
their sacrifice in some part vain if the war is 
not followed by a league of nations which, 
even though it be in the simplest form, will 
constitute the beginning of our international 
organization, which will advance disarma- 
ment, promote arbitration, secure the adjudi- 
cation of difficulties, and prevent war. Hu- 
manity has realized that if one of its mem- 
bers suffers all must suffer. It begins to be 
resolved that if it must bear the pains of 



92 The Christian Man, 

unity it must have its benefits too and must 
secure them by the agencies which are neces- 
sary. 

These are some of the long continuing ele- 
ments of the world problem which must be 
dealt with after the war and which cannot 
be postponed to be dealt with then. They 
must be dealt with now also and the war 
itself cannot deal with them except in the 
way of clearing away hindrances. As the 
Archbishop of York said on his recent visit 
to New York: " War in itself can only de- 
stroy not build up, and it devolves upon the 
allied nations to renew themselves and pre- 
pare not only for victory in the war, but for 
the greater task of upbuilding after the con- 
flict has ended. It would be futile to destroy 
the autocratic menace and then return to old 
conditions if that were physically possible. 
The new spirit, the spirit of humanity, of co- 
operation, of brotherhood, is needed if the 
full fruits of the war are to be reaped for the 
good of mankind. Nothing less will make 
the battling of to-day worth while." (New 
York Times, March 7, 19 18.) Some crea- 
tive power is necessary to deal now and here- 
after with the ideas and forces which make 
up the world problem for us. 

The Christian man believes that Christian- 
ity is the only solution of the problem, not a 



the Church and the War 93 

tame, low-tension Christianity, but a root and 
branch type, a return to the dynamic reality 
of the faith as it first laid hold on men's 
hearts and lives. Such Christianity contains 
the ideals and the energies without which we 
can neither see the right path nor force our 
way onward in it. " Surely the future looks 
black enough," says Mr. Watterson in his 
editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal on 
the fiftieth Christmas in its history, " yet it 
holds a hope, a single hope. One, and one 
power only, can arrest the descent and save 
us. That is the Christian religion. De- 
mocracy is but a side issue. The paramount 
issue underlying the issue of Democracy, is 
the religion of Christ, and Him crucified; the 
bedrock of civilization; the source and re- 
source of all that is worth having in the world 
that is, that gives promise in the world to 
come; not as an abstraction; not as a huddle 
of sects and factions; but as a mighty force 
and principle of being. ... If the world is 
to be saved from destruction — it will be 
saved alone by the Christian religion." In 
welcoming the Archbishop of York Mr. Root 
said as unequivocally that the fundamental 
issue is Paganism or Christ. And as Mr. 
Watterson says it must be the Christian re- *~^ 
ligion in its reality. And that reality is not 
a religious system, it is a personal power. 



94 The Christian Man, 

It is Jesus Christ. " I am the Way, the 
Truth and the Life." 

Jesus Christ was and is the righteousness 
of God. The Apostolic Church called him 
" that Just One." (Actsiii, 14; vii, 52; xxii, 
14.) His first demand was for righteous- 
ness. " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God 
and His righteousness." Micah's idea of re- 
ligion was not complete but it called for the 
first and indispensable essentials. " What 
doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, 
and to love kindness, and to walk humbly 
with thy God? " (Micah vi, 8.) It is be- 
cause injustice has been done and in order 
that injustice may not be done with impunity 
or done again at all that we are at war. 
There can be no peace without justice on the 
earth. And there will be justice when men 
obey Christ. 

Jesus Christ was and is good will. One 
of His biographies is given in five words, 
" He went about doing good." He did not 
go about seeking pleasure, save as He was 
pleased to do good. He did not seek power. 
He had it already and used it only for help- 
fulness. He did not seek wealth, though he 
taught men industry and thrift and made 
clearer than any other teacher the responsi- 
bility of trusteeship. He contrasted as fun- 
damentally contradictory the pagan ideal and 



the Church and the War 95 

His own. " And He said unto them, The 
kings of the Gentiles have lordship over 
them; and they that have authority over them 
are called Benefactors. But ye shall not be 
so : but he that is the greater among you, let 
him become as the younger; and he that is 
chief, as he that doth serve." (Luke xxii, 
25-27.) ^ This is the complete repudiation 
of the Nietzsche philosophy and the Treit- 
schke politics. And it is the judgment of 
God upon all selfishness of class or person in 
every nation. 

Jesus Christ was and is a principle of unity. 
He drew men about Himself in friendship 
while He was here. His " New Command- 
ment " was a law of fellowship. It was not 
a canon of doctrine or of ecclesiastical gov- 
ernment. It was both the pass-word and the 
power of a new brotherhood. " A new com- 
mandment I give unto you, that ye love one 
another; even as I have loved you, that ye 
also love one another. By this shall all men 
know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one 
another." (John xiii, 34.) From points of 
view made too familiar to us in the days of 
easy and barren optimism which have gone 
past, Christ's words are merely sentimental. 
They do not belong to the world of practical, 
economic and material interests. But they 
are the last words of true social and political 



g6 The Christian Man, 

economy none the less. And we shall go on 
misleading ourselves by our own fabrications 
until we come to them and accept their simple 
and sufficient solution of our whole problem 
of human relations. 

If we are to have an organizing principle 
of unity in the nation and in the world Jesus 
Christ must supply it. It was His purpose 
and expectation to do so. " I, if I be lifted 
up from the earth," He said, " will draw all 
men unto me." (John xii, 32.) No 
Church can do it until at last some Church 
unfolds which has Him alone for its Head 
and Life. Paul dreamed of humanity 
made into such a Church of Christ. " For in 
Him," says Paul, " were all things created, 
in the heavens and upon the earth, things 
visible and things invisible, whether thrones 
or dominions or principalities or powers; 
all things have been created through Him 
and unto Him; and He is before all things, 
and in Him all things consist. And He 
is the head of the body, the Church: who 
is beginning, the first born from the dead; 
that in all things He might have the pre- 
eminence. For it was the good pleasure of 
the Father that in Him should all the fullness 
dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things 
unto Himself, having made peace through the 
blood of His cross; through Him, I say, 



the Church and the War 97 

whether things upon the earth, or things in 
the heavens." (Col. i, 16-20.) " For He 
is our peace, who made both one, and brake 
down the middle wall of partition, having 
abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the 
law of commandments contained in ordi- 
nances; that He might create in Himself of 
the two one new man, so making peace; and 
might reconcile them both in one body unto 
God through the cross, having slain the en- 
mity thereby; and He came and preached 
peace to you that were far off, and peace to 
them that were nigh: for through Him we 
both have our access in one Spirit unto the 
Father. So then ye are no more strangers 
and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens 
with the saints, and of the household of God, 
being built upon the foundation of the apos- 
tles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being 
the chief corner stone; in whom each several 
building, fitly framed together, groweth into 
a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also 
are builded together for a habitation of God 
in the Spirit." (Eph. i, 16-22.) 

Humanity is far enough away from all this 
now. And, alas, there is no church estab- 
lishment on earth which greatly resembles it. 
But the principle is here and it is more nearly 
realized in the Christian Church even as 
we have it than in any other institution or 



98 The Christian Man, 

idea. And the war has brought sight of it 
to many men — not enough to change the 
world greatly but still enough to make sure 
that it will be changed some. 

Jesus Christ was and is the embodiment of 
truth about life and of a spirit of life which 
in spite of all the tragedy of war and even 
through the tragedy of war human hearts 
now widely discern and feel. A godly old 
man in one of the harassed neutral countries 
of Europe tries to sum up in a letter what he 
thinks he sees : 

" Let me precise," he says quaintly, " some points 
regarding the influence of the war on the Church. 

" 1. Especially in the beginning but also after- 
wards many have been unpleasantly surprised to see 
that life is more earnest than they ever dreamt of. 
I do not think that fear has any really good and 
reliable moral and religious results, but the distress 
of these times has turned many hearts to a more 
serious conception of life, to Christian thoughts, to 
feel their need of the message of the Gospel. A 
French friend told me that in the trenches modern 
literature became tedious and nauseous to him, he 
could only read the Bible and the classics. I have 
seen this in fine modern souls not only in belligerent 
countries but also here in our country. 

" 2. Modern dogmas have failed. Many thought 
that our civilization went by itself comfortably to 
heaven. Now they see that it goes to hell, that it 
must take another path, in order to get saved. Is 



the Church and the War 99 

evil real ? The Christian struggle against evil must 
be more recognized than it was before the war in 
modern thought. 

" 3. But at the same time the message of the 
Church about atonement, vicarious suffering, re- 
deeming love and the enigma of sacrifice has become 
evident as never before to many minds that despised 
such Christian ideas as foolish antiquities and that 
see now that those experiences touch the very deepest 
realities of life. 

" 4. Notwithstanding cruel enmities, hatred and 
crimes I think that human solidarity has never been 
as evidently and deeply recognized as now. It may 
be that a day will come when humanity has forgotten 
all the blood and the tears shed now but will bless 
the victory of Christian principles in international 
intercourse. 

" Such facts have turned many hearts to Christian- 
ity. They constrain the Church to contrition and 
repentance and to loving service. But they give her 
also wonderful tasks. Therefore I consider it as a 
holy, but most difficult duty, to make for a common 
confession of the Church of the supernational impor- 
tance of Christ's cross." 

Jesus Christ is the inspiration of what is 
true and worthy in the conception of national- 
ism. The specialization of achievement and 
of service which is the true function of na- 
tionalism draws sanction and power from the 
spirit and principles of Christ. But Christ's 
spirit transcends all that is exclusive and self- 
ish in the nationalistic idea and purifies it of 



ioo The Christian Man, 

false ambition and wrong. He lays the law 
of service and of sacrifice upon nations as 
upon men. It is significant that in this strain 
of war the nations have turned in evil hours 
to their old tribal gods but in every hour of 
sacrifice to the Christ crucified or to the white 
figure of the Risen Lord. 

Jesus Christ was and is the solution of the 
race problem. Is there any other? He 
teaches races not to subject and exploit but 
to befriend and serve one another. Nations 
have been slow to accept this as a principle 
of statecraft. To maintain troops on alien 
soil in the necessity of war has been within 
the constitutional prerogative of the state but 
to give help in education in days of peace in 
order to escape the possibility of war has 
seemed a project of unreality. It would be 
the most obvious of realities when race rela- 
tions are converted to Christ. He encour- 
ages human trust and confidence. Faith 
once established toward Him extends to 
other men. The apostolic communities were 
not content to sing to God " My faith looks 
up to Thee." Their faith looked out also 
toward man. And multitudes of men for 
the first time believed in themselves because 
some fellow Christian believed in them for 
Christ's sake. 

And Christ was not content to deal in pre- 



the Church and the War 101 

cepts on the problem of race. He had a 
great and far reaching spiritual purpose to 
which, in his conception of a biologically uni- 
fied humanity, Paul gave his whole soul and 
all the great effort of his life. " I have other 
sheep," Jesus put it, " which are not of this 
fold. Them also I must bring and they shall 
hear my voice and they shall become one 
flock, one shepherd." (John x, 16.) But 
He carries His conception further than the 
metaphor of a flock. " I am the Vine, ye are 
the branches. Abide in Me and I in you." 
(John xv, 4, 5.) And Paul states the great 
principle in still another form. He sees man 
idealized in a " new man that is being re- 
newed unto knowledge after the image of 
Him that created Him: where there cannot 
be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncir- 
cumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, 
freeman; but Christ is all, and in all." (Col. 
iii, 10, 11.) This may seem hopelessly mys- 
tical, beyond connection with any plan of 
practical politics. But we shall have to come 
to it or go on paying the price of missing it. 
The race problem has only three solutions 
for us, — laissez faire, with the penalty in the 
future just what it has always been, miscege- 
nation, with its impossible loss of so many 
of the gains of the racial differentiation and 
social progress of the past, and Christianity. 



102 The Christian Man, 

Jesus Christ is the one solution of the 
world problem because He is the one Sav- 
iour of men. And the root of the whole mat- 
ter is that men have to be made over again, 
and that Christ alone can do it. The world 
has not believed this. It has worked out all 
sorts of political and social arrangements and 
turned to education, government, trade, a 
dozen different devices to bring in the golden 
age. It has all been a failure. 

The Christian Church has done a little bet- 
ter. For a generation it has professed to 
believe in the duty of service and the law of 
brotherhood. But the profession while sin- 
cere has lacked the one essential tap root. 
" In my judgment," said Admiral Mahan, 
" the Church of to-day, laity and clergy, have 
made the capital mistake in generalship of 
reversing the two great commandments of 
the law; the two fundamental principles of 
her war, established by Christ Himself. 
Practically, as I observe, the laity hold, and 
the clergy teach, that the first and great com- 
mandment is ' Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself/ Incidentally thereto, it is ad- 
mitted, ' Thou shouldst love the Lord thy 
God.' It is of course too egregious an ab- 
surdity openly to call that the second com- 
mandment. It is simply quietly relegated to 
a secondary place. 



the Church and the War 103 

" Is not the judgment of the world one of 
indifferent contempt for a man who is trying 
to save his own soul — his miserable soul, as 
I have sometimes read? And yet what is a 
man's soul ? It is the one thing inexpressibly 
dear to God, for which, if there had been 
but one, He was content to give His Son, and 
this He has intrusted to the man as his own 
particular charge; I do not say his only 
charge, but the one clearly and solely com- 
mitted to him to make the most of it. It is 
the talent which he is to multiply by diligent 
care; not that he may delight in it himself, 
but that he may present it to God through 
Jesus Christ. . . . Because care of one's own 
soul, by internal effort and discipline, seemed 
selfish, men have rushed to the extreme of 
finding in external action, in organized benev- 
olence, in philanthropic effort, in the love of 
the neighbor — and particularly of the neigh- 
bor's body, for the neighbor's soul was nat- 
urally of not more account than one's own — 
not merely the fruit of Christian life, but the 
Christian life itself. That the kingdom of 
God is within you, an individual matter pri- 
marily and in essence, and only in conse- 
quence, and incidentally external, as all activ- 
ity is but a manifestation of life, and not life 
itself — all this was forgotten. This I con- 
ceive to be the state of the Church now," 



104 The Christian Man, 

And what the Church may have forgot, the 
world was not likely to remember. 

Will the Church remember now and lift 
the light of its witness before the nations? 
And will the nations accept or reject its wit- 
ness? Will it be again as it was once be- 
fore or different? 

Shall it be now as then, " O Jerusalem, Je- 
rusalem, how often would I have gathered 
thy children together, even as a hen gathereth 
her chickens under her wings and ye would 
not! Behold your house is left unto you 
desolate. For I say unto you, you shall not 
see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed 
is Hie that cometh in the name of the Lord." 
(Matt, xxiii, 37-39.) 

Or shall it be that august word, " The voice 
of a great multitude, and as the voice of many 
waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, 
saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, 
the Almighty, reignest. Let us rejoice and 
be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory 
unto Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is 
come, and his wife hath made herself ready. 
And it was given unto her that she should 
array herself in fine linen, bright and pure: 
for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the 
saints. And he saith unto me, Write, 
Blessed are they that are bidden to the mar- 



the Church and the War 105 

riage supper of the Lamb." (Rev. xix, 6^ 

9-) 

" This is mere rhapsody," says Practical 

Politics. 

" This is the ultimate practical politics," 

says History. 



THE END 



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The Church and the Man 

By DONALD HANKEY 
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